


The Shadow King

by Pessimystic



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-27
Updated: 2011-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 36,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pessimystic/pseuds/Pessimystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every child has their boogeyman. Unfortunately for Charles Xavier, his nightmare is very real and has no intentions of being forgotten. X:FC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Eavesdropping

Charles had long since realized his mother didn't recognize the acoustic properties of their home. Particularly the sound carrying qualities from the front hall to the vents in the second floor reading room.

He wasn't surprised at that fact, before recent years Sharon Xavier spent less than three days a week in the mansion and now... well, she avoided this particular room altogether. Charles, on the other hand, had pretty much taken up residence, ecstatic at the selection of books. He'd worked his way through every shelf low enough he could reach it on his own and was getting to the point where he had to pull an antique chair over to attain the higher level ones. That was one reason of three he loved the room and, well, as previously mentioned: Acoustics was another.

Charles was really a horrible eavesdropper.

"Mrs. Xavier," It was a male voice, American, tinged with hints of old age and tobacco. Charles could hear his footfalls as he passed over the door's threshold, Sharon closing the door behind him, "It is good to see you again."

"As always, Richard," Sharon replied primly, though her tone held an edge of nervousness, "Thank you for coming, I know this is a terrible inconvenience to you."

"No, no," He assured kindly, "I recognize the... _discretion_ this visit requires."

Sharon's voice hitched in a way Charles recognized when she tried to force a smile, "Quite."

The man, Richard continued, all small talk meant to lighten a mood, the noise fading to the point that Charles knew they were heading his way. Quickly, he scooped the book up from the floor and jumped onto the couch, trying to sit in a way that seemed like he'd been there the whole time. He only just cracked the book back open to his previous page when a light knock came on the door.

"Charles, darling?" Sharon didn't wait for him to answer to open the door, standing at the edge of the room with a slight squint, like the place was too bright. A man who could only be Richard eased in behind her, eyes curiously focused on him. Charles met the gaze back, polite but unintimidated.

"Yes, Mother?" He closed the book and pushed it onto the couch next to him, politely standing up like he'd been taught.

"We have a guest who would like to speak with you." Sharon moved to gesture but the man was already stepping close, bending down to offer a handshake at Charles's height.

"Doctor Brexton," He smiled, "and how are you, little man?"

The change in demeanor from professional to patronizing came with so little warning that Charles stuttered in returning the handshake, too busy staring at the man with quickly ascending eyebrows.

"Quiet well," Charles faltered, "Thank you."

"And how old are you, Charlie?" The man's grin widened amiably.

"Charles." He corrected, sending a quick disbelieving look at his mother who seem to be very busy staring at something on the pristine carpet, "and I am ten, but I expect you already knew that."

It was the man's turn to falter now, head tilting sharply, "And how would you know that, Charles?"

He frowned, "Well, you are a doctor, and you're here to see me, so I assumed that would have been your first question to my mother when she asked you here."

The man straightened to his normal posture, towering over Charles, the goofy grin off of his face. It had been replaced with something more reserved, an expression you'd fix on an adult instead of a child. Charles appreciated it immensely.

"You're a bright one, aren't you Charles?" The doctor spoke, gesturing for them both to sit, Mrs. Xavier mostly forgotten by the door.

Charles pinned his lips together for a moment at the compliment, looking off to a corner, "I haven't been able to go to school this past year, so I like to keep up."

"Because of your condition." Richard added unhelpfully.

Reluctantly, and with no short amount of caution, he nodded back, "Yes, my... condition." Charles's posture turned ridged even as he attempted to hide it. All of a sudden he wanted to be in any other room but this one, and he resented the man for robbing him of his sanctuary. He tucked his arms around his stomach and stared off in a pose very similar to his mother's, staring off at a corner, clinging to his calm.

"Do you hear voices, Charles?"

The question dropped in the room like a poorly skipped rock. The young boy didn't respond for a moment, eyes flickering around until he dared to look up at his mother.

"It's alright." She said, even though Charles could already feel the tremors underneath it. He wanted to plead with her to make this man, this situation go away, but he couldn't put it on her, he couldn't bear to pile his own fears on top of her own.

"Not all the time." His voice was quieter than usual, and he edged a look over at the stranger out of the corner of his eye before he managed to give him his full attention.

To his credit, the Doctor kept his expression fairly neutral, but Charles didn't really need expressions to tell what a person was thinking anymore. He could just feel it: The pity.

"Have you heard them lately?" He pressed, voice conversational.

Charles shook his head, "I've been trying not to."

"You can control it?" He returned, somewhat surprised.

"Mostly." Charles hedged.

Richard leaned forward in his chair, fingers locked together, "Why stop them, Charles? Are they mean voices?" His voice slid back into its earlier patronizing tone. Charles sighed in annoyance.

"They have no common malevolent property, if that's what you're asking, Doctor."

Yet again, he pressed, "Then why?"

"Because, it frightens Mother!" Charles nearly snapped, hands clenched, eyes focused keenly on Richard's. It must have been the old house, but the man could have sworn he heard a hollow, whispered echo of the words the boy had just spoken. The room itself had also taken on a weirdly oppressive mood and Richard found himself nearly unable to break off the stare Charles had zeroed on him.

Only when Charles looked away did the oppressive feeling dissipate, and Richard found himself oddly breathless.

The Doctor cleared his throat and tugged slightly at his tie, allowing the air to breathe in around his collar. When he looked back over Charles had once again started a staring contest with a blank part of the floor.

"You mother told me this all started after you heard the news of your father..." He tried once more.

"No," Charles cut him off, obviously not liking the way that question was going but still stubbornly keeping his gaze to the floor, "It just got worse. If you'd please, I'd like not to talk about that."

"Fair enough," The man nodded, "Then how about we talk about the incident at school last year?"

Charles looked like he didn't like this topic any better than the last one but he kept that opinion to himself, "You mean my brief catatonic lapse, the chair I threw out the window, or the time I appeared to be shouting at nothing in particular in the middle of class. You have to be specific with my incidents, Doctor, or at least narrow it down to a month."

"Charles Xavier!" Sharon chided sharply, before recently she'd never heard such a tone come out of her usually well mannered son. The most apologies she received was a quick desperate look before he turned away again.

"Those incidents won't happen again," Charles promised after a moment.

"Because you can control it now?" The Doctor asked, unperturbed by the outburst.

"No..." Charles shook his head again, speech uneven as he thought, "and yes. There was... something there at that school. Or perhaps just near it. I looked but I couldn't find it on the grounds, but it has to be there. I haven't heard it since I came home, I don't think it's close enough."

Sharon Xavier and Doctor Brexton exchanged a brief look that spoke more than enough for the whole situation.

"Charles," Richard spoke carefully, "What was this voice?"

The boy shook his head, lost in the memory, "I don't know. It didn't feel like the others. It wasn't even words sometimes, it was a presence. It felt like he could see me." He frowned in frustration, not used to not knowing.

The Doctor perked up at the change, "He, not it?"

Charles looked up, unaware that he'd made the distinction, "I... well, yes. I think he'd have to be. I asked him his name once." He almost didn't want to finish where this was going. He was now keenly aware of what the two adults in the room thought of him and he didn't know what was worse, letting them believe that he was, in fact, crazy or tell them the truth and seem even crazier.

"What was his name, Charles?"

With a deep sigh of resignation, he answered, "The Shadow King."


	2. Marble and Iron

Erik found the box in what Sean had jokingly named the second, _second_ , tertiary parlor, aka: the one with all the hidden spiders. He'd been naming them ever since Raven's "tour" turned into a cleaning expedition. Raven had guided them through nearly the whole first floor so far, wading through problems created by years of disuse and the paranoid pack rat tendencies of who Raven only referred to as "The Stepfather." They divested furniture of its protective linen coverings, shaking years worth of dust into the air, turning rooms into choking clouds of allergy agitators. Sean's sneeze turned into jabbing comments, comments turned into hurt feelings, hurt feelings turned into throwing random bits of trash. It didn't take long for the whole affair to turn into some sort of demented rube goldberg machine of teenage annoyances.

Had he been in any other frame of mind, Erik would have probably been driven quickly insane by it. However, as it was, it served as very nice cover for what he was doing: impolitely rummaging through all of the various possessions of the Xavier household, searching for some bit of insight on a man he realized he knew next to nothing about. He was being mostly subtle about it, poking into the random boxes stacked here and there wasn't out of the question seeing as what you might find in them ranged from party favors to stacks of identical shoes. He didn't bother with most of them. During his time tracking Shaw, he'd become quite good at getting inanimate objects to speak in a way. He knew what it looked like when people tried to hide something. An oddly shaped box, lack of labeling, different materials than the norm, signs of use or disuse. There was something that bothered him that he felt the need to apply these talents he usually saved for Shaw on his relatively new, and probably only friend, but it didn't exactly stop him.

The room quieted for a moment and Erik stilled almost guiltily. It only took him a moment to realize the silence was because the children had moved to the next room and not because he'd somehow been discovered, then he continued on his search. Truly, he didn't feel guilty, this was simply a fact finding mission. In their time at the CIA base and traveling around recruiting, he had spoken with the telepath on pretty much every topic of consequence. He'd like to think he'd come to understand him somewhat well in that short time and yet he had absolutely no idea about his history. He didn't have the benefit of reaching into Charles's head and knowing every moment of it, after all. He was simply evening the playing field. Thus the box.

He found it under a sheet covered sofa with two other boxes that were starting to show their age. Erik ran his hand on the outside edge of the oldest looking one, looking for some kind of label. Every other box they'd come across so far had one, meticulously so. It was practically a giant waving red flag. He opened the box before he allowed himself to think about it and peered at the objects inside.

Files and notebooks, all covered in cramped and drastically leaning script. Whoever had made them wasn't a fan of typewriters apparently, and Erik didn't recognize the handwriting as Charles or Raven's. It did have a certain personality about it, though, one that spoke of higher learning and a degree or two. Something about those two seemed to make writing less legible.

Erik eased open the top folder skimming the lines of the most official looking document in the pile, though calling it official was still a bit of a stretch. He didn't particularly comprehend the meaning of what he was reading until he was a good bit in.

>  __Patient continues to exhibit symptoms. Auditory hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, reported violent outbursts, though I have yet to witness that myself. If only the books were concerned, it would be classic schizophrenia. The symptoms line up perfectly. There are few clues as to the cause of the deviation from the norm. The young age, the episodic nature, the lack of cognitive problems. For all intents and purposes, Charles is the most quick witted child- no, person in general I have come across in years._ _
> 
> __Mrs. Xavier outright refuses the idea of hospital stays, hell she won't even allow me to take my notes out of the house. I'd be concerned about her reading them if not for the fact that she can scarcely bare to bring up the topic in conversation, let alone sit down to read the entirety of my report. Though her reasoning may be flawed, I don't think hospitalizing Charles would help him. While he is perfectly sociable, it seems the more populated the area, the more symptoms occur (Agoraphobia, perhaps?). Forcing that on him at this point seems like it would do more damage than good, especially if we were to house him with others less cognitively capable._ _
> 
> __Nevertheless, Charles is a significantly disturbed child and believes his delusions with a steady conviction. Given his obvious ability to hide his symptoms, the question then becomes how long has he really been presenting them and how deep this sickness goes. Did it truly start after his father died, as his mother assures me, or is it just something he chose to reveal because of the pressures involved. He does seem very functional, and with any other patient I might say that this illness would play only a small insignificant part in his childhood, but I can't help but wonder if he isn't just saying exactly what he thinks I want to hear just to get me to stop asking the questions._ _
> 
> __I worry that, should I give him a bill of health, or at least the go ahead to return to school, he will simply just continue right on with the violent outbursts._ _
> 
> Erik's grip slackened on the folder for half a second, the papers sliding between his fingers, quickly creasing under the friction. He straightened them out quickly, skimming the rest of the document with a growing feeling he couldn't quite describe. The old adage seemed to be taunting him, be careful what you wish for. He wanted to know, and now he did, and he was finding no solace in it.

"Did you find something?" Alex's voice broke the silence in the room unexpectedly, voice holding somewhere between the usual caution the children fixed on him and a subtle suspicion Erik could almost respect him for. Almost.

Erik didn't bother turning around, he just flipped the folder closed nonchalantly, the box mostly hidden from Alex's view. "Just some old papers." He grumbled in his usual tone of mind-your-own-business. Wisely, if slowly, Alex mumbled a whatever and left the way he came, leaving Erik alone once again with the box.

He considered the front of the now closed folder, eyebrows nearly completely stitched together before dropping it back in the dust filled box and replacing the lid. He'd have to find the thing a better hiding spot now that Alex found him looking through it. Erik reading it was one thing. Letting the children find something that Charles very obviously wanted to keep private was entirely another.

He hefted the box up quickly, already planning on stashing it in one of the many closets they'd come across thus far. He nearly dropped the thing again when he turned around to see a particular telepath leaning on the door frame.

"Most people would consider that rude." Charles said pleasantly, eyes flicking the box for only a second before turning an amused look back at Erik.

"I thought I told you to stay out of my head." Erik shot back with an anger that wasn't anywhere near as real is it used to be.

"I didn't read yours." Charles rolled his eyes slightly and stuck his hands in his pockets.

Erik snapped a look to the door the blond mutant had left from, "Ah. Alex."

"You don't give him enough credit. Now," Charles smiled briefly before tipping his head in a gesture to follow him, "Bring that box, would you?"

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"Agent MacTaggert! Where have you been?"

Moira quickly parted the phone from her ear, the sheer volume on her partner's voice hitting that particular pitch of annoyance that she simply couldn't bear to hear. She was sure that the man was capable of hitting the exact same note as her mother when Moira had announced her intended career path at the CIA. It was somewhere between fear and condescension, all twisted in a bow of "what will the neighbors think?"

"I'm checking in now, Levene. Exactly when I'm required to." She moved the phone back only long enough for her point to be heard and popped it away again as she felt a massive sigh coming on.

Moira eased herself up onto the stool the owners of the restaurant had helpfully supplied for her use. Hank had given her a way to call in without being traced but the mansion had been unused for so long that it simply didn't have a working phone yet. Thankfully the owner of the restaurant used to deliver weekly groceries to the mansion way back when and still remembered Charles and Raven fondly, so her phone was open for use whenever needed.

"-and now the higher ups are yelling at _me_ for some reason. No one said they could leave, Moira, we have to find them or our asses are...grass."

"-es?" Moira supplied helpfully, only just tuning back into her partner's complaints.

Levene grumbled something inaudible, the whine of heavy machinery threading into the background noise.

"Where are you?" Moira asked curiously.

"Looking at a pile of million dollar rubble that they'll probably try to blame on me too. Secret base my ass, those mutants didn't have trouble finding it. This is where you _should_ be, by the way, if you didn't catch that." Levene alternated between talking to himself and her. "You never did tell me where you are."

Moira chose to overtly ignore that last part, "What about Shaw, any news?"

Levene gave a grand sigh, she could just imagine him fidgeting with his glasses in annoyance, "No one's seen the Caspartina in days, last time Shaw was sighted was yesterday, when he came and killed everyone, remember?"

"...and what about the Russians?" She leaned into the receiver, not wanting to alarm any employees who decided to come in unannounced.

"They haven't turned around if that's what you mean."

Moira chewed on her lip briefly, "How long?"

"A week at best." He responded tiredly... and then, something changed in his voice. It turned a little more... desperate. "Moira, I really need to know where those mutants are."

The change was enough to make her pause before answering. She hadn't intended on keeping the whole thing a secret. She wasn't about to give the location away but she was going to say that they were together and still had the intention of helping... but something stopped her.

"It will all be in my report, Levene." She answered carefully, eyes narrowed, "I'm still within the constraints of my mission. You can read my report when I turn it in at the end of the month." When it will be too late for anyone to do anything about it.

The man practically grunted, "Damnit, Moira! You will not get me fired because you have some silly crush on that English freak."

Moira physically jerked away from the phone, shocked. Sure, Levene had never been the most... tactful partner, but he was never like _this._ As a matter of fact he's the only person they'd paired her with who hadn't outright dismissed her for her gender. Moira bit her lip to keep herself from giving him a talking to on the matter, hands shaking with anger, and slowly put the phone back to her ear.

"Goodbye, Levene."

Miles away, Agent Levene negligently dropped the car phone back in its cradle and slumped back into the leather bench seat, notebook open on his lap. Scribbled across the pages were snippets of notes, and maps pertaining to a certain secret mutant project. Names, powers, descriptions of all the recruits and the members of the Hellfire Club. Locations of homes, bank accounts, where they'd stashed one Emma Frost. Everything. Levene lifted the book, allowing the pages to flip in front of his uncharacteristically pensive face.

"All this power and I still don't have an eidetic memory." He mumbled to himself forlornly before abruptly slamming the notebook shut and retrieving a large manilla envelope from between the seat and his leg, "Next best thing, The United States Postal Service." He said again to no one and dropped the notebook into the envelope, sealing it. He applied the proper postage and address, and grinned widely. "God bless America."

Later that day, Agent Levene woke groggily in the front seat of his car, another agent tapping irritably on his window.

"You alright in there?" He leaned into the open window with an arched eyebrow, "I delivered that package for you. You're welcome, by the way."

Levene stared at him with a wide open jaw, "What package? Where am... Hey! Where'd my notebook go!"

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Erik swore Charles was dragging this out on purpose, to teach him some kind of lesson or other. Usually he was a little more transparent, if not overt. He told you what he wanted you to understand and waited to see if you did. Repeat until one's thought process changes or you find yourself at an impasse. Needless to say, Erik found himself participating in many of the latter sort and was expecting this to be no different.

Charles directed him up the stairs and through a set of double doors leading into what was obviously a reading room, the first spitting flames already starting in the fireplace. It seemed Charles had come up first thing and cleaned the place out as the only sign of its disuse was in the dust clinging to surfaces too high for the man to reach.

The telepath continued his silence as Erik dropped the box down on the coffee table, the impact rattling the room loudly. Charles gave him a quick look over his shoulder, but otherwise ignored him, heading over to rummage with something on the bookshelf.

Erik, on the other hand, was left to stand idly, his emotions arcing quickly over from slight guilt to anger.

"Is there some point to this?" Erik bit out and Charles once again tossed him a brief look.

"Yes." He answered simply, piquing Erik's annoyance.

Erik shifted in his spot irritably, "And do you intend on telling me what that point is?"

Charles sighed so lightly it was almost inaudible, "What I'm doing is giving you the chance to ask me whatever you want." He made his way back over to the seating area, dropping the thin wooden box next to the offending files before turning back to the other mutant, "I have never lied to you Erik. What I say to you is the honest, unadulterated truth, and always has been. I do that because you're my _friend_ and you deserve no less."

Erik stared across at the other man, eyebrows quickly descending together, shoulders squaring in defiance at the telepath's pointed stare. "I know that..." He answered, frowning.

"Then next time," Charles half laughed, sinking back into one of the armchairs, "ask me instead of digging through boxes of dusty papers no one really even remembers anymore."

Silently, with a frown still creasing his face, Erik sat down across from him. Charles finally pulled the wooden box open showing a much nicer chess set than the one they'd been using up until now. Erik almost had to smile when one half of the pieces were made of a polished iron and others pure marble. Charles caught the look and smiled.

"Yes, I'd though you'd appreciate that." He straightened out the board and started setting up the ivory pieces on his side, knowing which Erik would prefer. With a few seconds and some subtle hand motions, the metals pieces wobbled, rolled, and shuddered into their places until they were all set up for a new game. "You're getting better at the finer controls." Charles noted appreciatively.

Erik simply answered by moving his pawn out first without touching it. They wordlessly and quickly jumped back and forth a few turns, pieces quickly scrambling into formations. Ever since they first began playing chess with a cheap plastic and cardboard set supplied by the CIA, they'd both had very obvious roles, especially at first. It was how Charles had truly lured him in to some odd sort of friendship before he'd even realized it was happening.

He simply set up a chess board and started talking. Erik didn't have to participate, and he didn't, for a very long while. That was, until the conversation topics became to interesting to ignore. They threaded through every conceivable genre of knowledge, agreeing on some things but disagreeing on far more.

It was an exercise that should seem frustrating or futile, but there was something about the way they talked about it. It wasn't accusatory or condescending. It was a simple presentation of facts and reasoning that they would then send back and forth, pulling each other's arguments to shreds in a way that seemed to somehow benefit them both.

But it was always Charles's role to start it. Today was the same, but oh so different. Gone was politics and philosophy, apparently today was the day they delved into the topic he had avoided thus far.

"My father bought me the chess set, just before left to go back to Europe." Charles said abruptly, hand propping up his chin. "He taught me how to play, of course, and I was just getting to the point where I could occasionally win when he left for the military. We never actually played a game on this board."

Erik hesitated in moving his piece for only a moment, more focused on the telepath than the game. He was so distracted he flubbed a move, ruining a tactic he'd been setting up. Charles smiled at the board and reached to move one of his own pieces nonsensically, putting Erik back in good standing.

"He promised we would play a game when he returned, and I decided I was going to tell my parents about my mutation then as well," Charles tilted his head, eyes unfocused, "He died in Berlin."

Erik didn't respond, he knew enough that Charles felt his sympathy without trying. Words would only cheapen it. He moved a piece again and Charles followed up with another move. Despite the topic at hand, it was still a hard game, the telepath wasn't going easy on him.

"I didn't so much hear the news as feel it." Charles pressed a knuckle to his temple at the memory, not intending on using his powers but haunted by the ghost of them. "I felt the soldier delivering the news to the third family that day. Felt the utter uselessness that would probably haunt him for the rest of his life, the hardening of his heart. I saw the memories of his friends, loved ones. _Brothers_ die." Charles shook his head slowly, "and I just felt my mother _break_."

Charles moved a piece over, confiscating the metal bishop and setting it to the side. Erik barely noticed.

"Check, by the way."

Erik repositioned a knight to break the check, not bothering to use his powers. He couldn't trust himself not to make the piece fling across the room at this point. He moved the piece slowly, reluctantly letting it go to watch it wobble into place. Charles followed it up with a move of his own, any hint of unease completely erased, blue eyes suddenly honed in on Erik.

"I need you to understand something, my friend," He said, instantly drawing the metal user's full attention, "I do not tell you this story seeking sympathy or pity. I have been lucky enough to have so many things, had the opportunity to do so much, _learn_ so much. To have Raven stay with me, to meet all these people..." A smile crept onto his face at that, and Erik almost found himself returning it, "However, I need you to know that my convictions are not born out of childish naivete. I have seen the horrors of the world through others' eyes, felt it as if it were my own. The last thing I could bear would to be the cause of it in anyone else."

The words hung leaden in the air even as Charles ignored their weight and moved another piece, accepting Erik's silence as a given. The sound of the front door slamming somehow made its way up into the tiny reading room, emanating for the lonely vent on the floor. For some reason it made the telepath inexplicably smile.

"If you'll excuse me, Moira's back with some news about the Russians." He stood up from his chair, placing his final move after Erik's. For a moment, it looked like Charles was going to leave it at that, before his eyes concentrated on the dusty box still sitting innocently on the table. "If you would do me a favor, Erik. Read those files... but after you do, come to me and I'll tell you the ending."

Erik nodded edgily, looking at the box like somehow Shaw was hiding inside of it. Charles just gave him one of those understanding smiles and quietly left, leaving him alone to notice that he'd lost the chess match.


	3. Something New

"Thought I'd find you here."

Charles smiled at the approaching reflection of his sister as she sidled up next to him. If he hadn't been watching the window pane made reflective by the night outside, he wouldn't have seen her approaching at all. She had taken to walking around the place without shoes and was getting quiet good at stealth. So good really, that he doubted she even realized her uncanny ability to walk in near perfect silence.

Raven carefully looked her arm around his and leaned into his shoulder, wordlessly joining him in looking out the window. It was really a futile thing, they couldn't really see at the carefully trimmed yard beyond or anywhere close to what they both knew what was out there. Three quiet headstones just on the edge of the lawn where the forest started taking back over, roots and leaves twining around the remarkably modest markers.

"It's been a while hasn't it," She hummed a sigh after a moment of silence, rocking back on her heels.

"Years," He smiled sideways at her, "Two degrees at the very least."

Raven snorted inelegantly, "You have like, a million of them."

"Three is _not_ a million, Raven." He answered with a fake sigh, "They taught me that in my second year."

"Well then!" She returned shoving him in lightly with her own weight, "money well spent!" She shifted her hold on his arm and leaned her cheek on his shoulder and sighed, content.

"Thank you for taking the others today." Charles added after a moment, joking tone gone and replaced with something secret.

"I figured you'd want a moment alone." Raven nodded against his shoulder, letting an somber silence weave back between the words, "We put a marker in the garden for Darwin today... It's by that redbud tree on the south end."

Charles closed his eyes for only a second, a feeling of loss and guilt shuddering through him, "I'll have to pay my respects tomorrow."

"It was awful, Charles," She whispered, thick but stubbornly controlled, "The people—and Shaw and then... The soldiers just handed us over. Who _does_ that?"

He would like to say he was surprised at that. That he could come up with some explanation for why that guard had so easily directed Shaw to them. He wasn't, and he couldn't, at least not an explanation that would do any good. Not one that wouldn't seem weak and insulting to their trauma. He'd seen the events through the minds of the others, pieced it together. It had been the difference between him sending them all home and keeping them to train. That night had changed them. They _weren't_ children anymore.

"Fear makes monsters of all men," Charles muttered back eventually.

"Doesn't make it right."

"No, no it doesn't."

Raven shook her head, "How do you do it? Feel all this and just..." She frowned as she tried to describe it. It wasn't that he wasn't effected by the events around him, it was obvious he was, but ever since she'd known him he'd just let losses roll off of him. He kept a clarity that she could not comprehend, a _distance_ from things. She gave up on describing it and huffed lightly, making a vague motion at his reflection in the window. "Y'know."

"Yes, I think I do," Charles smiled lightly, "Practice, perhaps... or necessity. When you grow up with the mutation I do, you are given two choices. You can either protect yourself, put up a barrier between you and the feelings and wait until they pass... or you can let them in and come to terms with the damage they may or may not do."

Raven didn't have to guess which one he'd chosen, what alarmed her was the he'd had an option this whole time. Usually, like now, he'd learned to master whatever was thrown at him but there had been times when there had just been too many or too much. It had scared her when she was little. It had been the reason she'd told him never to read her mind. She didn't want to ever be the cause of that.

"I don't regret it," he assured her quickly, seeing as her eyes grew stormier by the second, "When Erik and I were in Russia, we met the other telepath. When I read her... it was obvious she'd made the other decision. She had buried herself so deeply inside her own mind that she barely felt anything at all. Any emotions she did show were just base imitations. She'd cut herself off from everything that makes her human." The sense of numb awe from that experience hadn't left him yet. Looking into her mind had opened up a window into what his life could have been if things had perhaps been different and he did not envy her.

Raven hid her expression behind her hair, trying not to let her current indecision show. She wasn't as sure as he was, that the fate he'd described was so terrible. There were days, especially recently, where she just wished she didn't have to deal with the grief, her own insecurities, or with the prejudice of the rest of the world. Cutting herself off from that didn't seem like such a bad idea.

"She isn't human, Charles," Raven whispered, a power in her voice, "Neither are we."

Charles considered the point, weighing it in an instant against scientific definitions and the usual placating, comforting answers he would give to his little sister. He didn't know whether it was the painfully honest talks with Erik, some new revelation, or perhaps an acceptance, but the usual answer died quickly, replaced with something different.

"No, we aren't human," His reflection stared back at him with an expression of conviction, "but would it be so terrible if we had something in common? We are something _new_ , Raven, we get to choose what the rest of our race becomes. It's the very idea of evolution. Why not embrace the best of what came before and leave the worst of ourselves behind?"

Raven brushed her hair back behind an ear, not sure how to respond and more than a little perplexed at her brother's response. For some reason the weeks they'd been apart seemed like years and something huge had changed in the both of them in that time. She carefully examined him, trying to read into any little clue as to whether it mattered. Finally she pinched her lips together and rested her head back on his shoulder.

"I missed talking to you."

Charles smiled lightly, "Me too."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Erik didn't sleep that night.

It wasn't all that usual of an occasion, he generally didn't adhere to the eight hour rule the rest of the world liked so much and didn't feel lesser for it. It wasn't because of some insomnia or anxiety, he simply didn't like sleeping. The whole thing seemed to be only a massive waste of time that he could be doing far more important things with. So he snatched three or four hours here and there, just enough to stay sharp. He knew his limits and usually it made him all the more productive.

However, after joining up with Charles's little group of mutants, the habit was actually becoming quickly annoying. The hours of the night he had previously filled plotting his careful hunt for Shaw were now disturbingly vacant. He had nothing to discover anymore. They knew where Shaw would be and when. They knew his team, his plan, his tactics. He had nowhere to be, nowhere to go. All the other mutants were asleep (well, besides Hank who seemed to sleep less than he did, always tinkering on some project or another) so he couldn't really train or strike up a conversation.

All he was left with was himself and his thoughts... and Charles had given him much to think about.

The box was sitting on the top of the dresser where he'd left it. He had barely looked at it to this point, stubbornly so, but it sat in front of him now, practically mocking him. Yet he hesitated.

Erik ran a calloused hand over the top, the lid gritty even though it had long since been freed of the dust. It slid off easily, once again exposing the contents to the light of the one lamp Erik kept on.

He considered the files like an old enemy. Charles obviously thought there was some lesson to learn here, though he could find a lesson in anything, Erik was sure. As much as he insisted he wasn't a professor yet, he sure seemed keen on teaching him things at every possible opportunity he doubted this was an exception.

The question was, then, did he _want_ to learn?

His perception that Charles's pie in the sky world views were only due to an innocent upbringing, loving parents, and what seemed like natural control over his powers had been quickly smashed with only five minutes with these files. It had been that earlier perception that had let him believe that, given time, Charles would come to understand the true way of the world. Knowing as he did now, he wondered if that was even going to be possible. Especially with the seven day deadline. He had every intention of killing Shaw, and he really had no exact clue how the telepath would look at him after.

He wanted to create a world where mutants didn't have to fear for their lives, where they'd be so far above persecution it couldn't hope to touch them. Charles Xavier wanted the same thing, he was sure of it, it was just a question of how. Erik could convince some of the mutants, he knew. The ones with black hearts who saw themselves mirrored in him... but Charles. Erik could swear it was some other power he had, the instant loyalty. He couldn't really bear to think what would happen if they ended up in opposition... and he had no intention of letting it happen.

He had seven days. Seven days to bridge the gap between them and, like it or not, he was sure the answers were in these files.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Let me ask you a question."

Emma Frost snapped into her diamond persona in half a second purely on instinct. The only thing that kept her from scrambling off the bed and into a corner was that fact that she was _Emma Frost_ and Emma did _not_ scramble. Instead, she twisted her body gracefully toward the mirrored wall, considering the hole still cut into the glass.

Through the clean cut, she could easily see the face of a man, looking at her with a quiet contemplation that seemed out of place on the leathery face. Without permission, her body shuddered, the tremors small but obvious to the onlooker. His lips stretched into a smile, showing no teeth, and all the creepier for it. She shivered again and unconsciously slid herself back an in on the bed in her cell.

It wasn't his appearance that startled her, no, if anything he seemed like the genial, working class, fatherly type. It was his... presence. The waves of sheer psychic animosity were probably so thick that you wouldn't have to be a telepath to read it, but as she was... it was terrifying. It was almost completely oppressive, even behind her diamond shielding.

"Respect." He said darkly, "it has been too long since anyone has had that much good sense around me."

Emma drew every ounce of her considerable icy personality to the forefront and tilted her head up proudly, "You're a telepath."

"Obviously." The man drug out the first part of the word with some humor.

"Why are you here?" Emma asked as evenly as possible.

"That is more my question," He answers with a head tilt, "Why are _you_ still here? You can obviously get out anytime you want." He looks at the edges of the diamond cut hole pensively before running a single finger along the inside edge, painting the glass abruptly red. He ignores the cut entirely, "You can leave, yet you don't. Is this some secret plot Shaw has cooked up?"

Emma chose to remain silent, probably wisely so. The man didn't seem all that surprised, at the very least.

"Your leader and I have some... tangential goals." He said, "I've come to understand that he intends to rid the world of humanity. Believe me, I'm not opposed to that, though it seems a bit of a waste. I've also became aware that there are some other mutants, who aren't quite so enamored with the idea, in particular a rather powerful telepath."

The subtle twist of the mouth is all the indication she gives, and the man reacts as if she just shouted the entire confrontation at the top of her lungs. She double checks her mental shields, not sure he hasn't cracked them even though it should be an impossibility in her current form.

"You've met then." He smiles that odd smile again, laughing under his breath, "and he read you, quite easily I guess."

Emma's frown twisted deeper, "He had help."

"In what?" The man said, "cracking you out of your diamond form? We both know I wasn't speaking of that. You had to have sensed it. He could have wiped your brain entirely clean if he had wanted to, rewritten your very base instincts so that you would willingly walk right back up to Shaw and stab him in the back."

Emma shifted uncomfortably. She had known that, known it the instant he'd entered her mind. He could have _wrecked_ her, but instead he'd been alarmingly gentle. "He didn't."

"But he _could._ " The man said darkly. "If desperation struck, and there was no other choice? He might. Then where would your invincible leader be?"

Silence, yet again, seemed the appropriate answer.

"I'll take care of his telepath problem and you can be free to take over the world at your leisure. All I need is a little meeting and I think you could help me arrange that..." The man's teeth showed, the indistinct lighting on the other side of the glass turning the deep laugh lines into something much more sinister, "with your permission or without."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 _Due to the strict rules enforced by Mrs. Xavier, recording devices are out of the question for my sessions with her son. She considers them far too easy to reproduce, I suppose. So I have been forced to_

 _recreate my sessions as close as humanly possible as soon after the events if not during. This is complicated case, to be sure, and my memory is not what it used to be._

 _Hereafter are said events, as I recall them._

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"You don't want to be here."

The small voice made Richard Brexton look up from his notes, the nearly constant scratching of his pen silencing for a moment. Charles was where he had been all night, sitting in one of the arm chairs, hands over his temples. Sharon had explained he'd been having headaches all week, thus the reason she had called him in. She was worried about him, of course, but not enough to cancel her trip to Boston. Richard was a prominent psychologist, one of the best in his field, and he suddenly found himself playing babysitter. He'd been trying to hide it, no need to burden an ill child with his own problems. It didn't seem to stop Charles from noticing anyway, he was extremely observant.

"I don't know what you mean." He smiled back, pulling his reading glasses off of his nose and hooking them over the book cover.

Charles had arranged himself so he was sitting sideways, hooking his own arms over the arm of the chair so he could keep his hands firmly over his temples. The position also made it extremely easy to see the slight look of disapproval the ten year old was sending him. It was the same look he always gave Richard whenever he made the mistake of talking to him like he was a child, though it was usually much more tempered by sheer manners. The fact that he didn't even try probably spoke more for his headache than anything.

"It's alright. You can go," Charles mumbled, leaning farther into the the crook of the chair's arm, "I won't tell mother."

"Now that wouldn't be very professional of me." He shook his head, chortling to himself. "and I couldn't very well leave you all by yourself."

"It would be better if you did." Charles sank farther, looking almost annoyed now.

"Really," He continued to chuckle, turning to look back down at his notebook, "how might that be?"

For a moment Charles looked like he was going to answer, but thought better, teeth clicking together as he quickly shut his mouth and repressed his hands to the sides of his head. He remained that way for a good five minutes, sinking so far that half of his face we hidden behind the chair's arm, watching him write with an expression that was looking more and more pained as time went on.

The child brushed off a few more attempts of Richard asking if he felt alright, or at least that's what it sounded like. Charles didn't bother to unbury his face from the chair before he answered, so the words were muffled affirmatives at best. In any other case, the petulance would have been expected, but it was abundantly out of place here. Richard couldn't ignore it any longer. He dropped his notebook on a side table and kneeled next to Charles's chair, despite the loud complaints from his knees.

"Don't." Charles said sharply, halting the psychologist from putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. He rocked back on his haunches, almost offended.

"Alright," He sighed, "Then how about you tell me what's wrong."

Charles mumbled something that sounded remarkably like "headache" but it was halfhearted at best.

"Don't lie to me, young man." He chided, full on brandishing a finger, "I do have a degree in this."

"You wouldn't believe me anyway..." Charles said lowly, "unless you suddenly want to 'entertain my delusions'." The last words came out sounding like the boy was mocking something Richard had said, except there was no way in the world he would ever utter that thought out loud. It was almost a challenge.

"And what if I said I would?" he returned archly.

Charles looked at him, completely disbelieving, and a bit wary. It seemed like he expected this to be some sort of trap. In a way, it was. Charles was usually so close lipped about his delusions, the fact that he seemed to have caught him in the middle of one was astounding and incredibly useful. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, though, Charles glared poison at him and shifted to give him the cold shoulder.

Richard was hit with the urge to apologize, apparently his expression had given more away than he liked. "Come now..." He started ineffectually, "You obviously want to talk about it, consider me no longer your therapist and more... of a wall."

Charles turned partway, gracing him with half of his attention, "You want me to sound even _more_ mad."

"Really!" He said, "I am merely a structure of brick and mortar with no opinion on the matter!"

"But you're not," Charles said pointedly, "and you _do_ have an opinion. Many, actually."

"Pretend, for godsakes Charles." Richard huffed, "Quickly, before my arthritis kicks in."

Despite the continuous look of disbelief, there was a rebel corner of Charles's mouth which had upturned in some amusement. It faded quickly but it was a good sign. After a moment, he shifted back so he could face Richard again.

"There is a woman," He started hesitantly, "Down the road, closer to town. She's... dying, has been for some time, but it's taken a turn."

"What's she ill of?" Richard asked curiously and was treated to a sharp look from Charles.

"Bricks and mortar do not talk, Dr. Brexton." He says, eyes becoming clear for long enough to say it before dashing off to some far off place. Apparently that place was this nameless woman's bedside, "She's in pain, alone. Her family wants nothing to do with her and she can't blame them. She keeps remembering all the things she said them, how she drove them away. She regrets it _so much_ but it's too late. Even the hospice nurse she hired hates her. She's been trying to figure out a way to apologize to them all the entire night, but she simply doesn't know how."

Despite Charles's earlier assertion, Richard tries again to speak. The boy looks far enough off he's not sure he'll notice either way. Not that he could have stopped himself, the obvious pain on the boy's face demanded he say _something_ , "Why are you there, Charles?"

"I was trying to control it, I was. I heard her and I just..." Charles shook his head, curling his hands against his temples again, "I don't want to turn it off."

Richard kept deathly still, "Why not?"

"I don't want to leave Evelyn alone."

The psychologist found himself in a bit of a situation with very little precedent with which to point himself. This delusion could only be that, a delusion. However, it was curiously specific and it seemed emotionally close to the boy. Richard frowned slightly, recalling some experience his colleague had told him. He was sure these delusions had some origination point in reality. He'd had success by taking his patients through these things, finding the root of the story in the safety of their own hallucinations, and then allowing them to find solutions. Like a repeating dream that wouldn't leave you alone until you solved the puzzle inside of it, he believed these things needed to be resolved before they could be cured. His colleague had never tried it in this sort of case though, which left him with a dilemma.

So in a move that may very well get him in trouble with a few ethical boards, Richard decided he was going to encourage the delusion.

"You said earlier," He started slowly, "That you can hold a conversation. Have you tried talking to this... Evelyn."

Charles snapped over to look at him as if he was now the crazy one, eyebrows pushed together, "I... I don't know if that's _right_ to do. I don't usually..." He uncharacteristically stumbled over his argument before forcefully shutting his mouth and restarting, "What if she thinks she's mad too?"

"Everyone hears voices in their heads Charles, we don't jump to that conclusion until those voices start not being our own." Richard tried to soothe the tricky topic with what he thought was moderate success. His intention was to turn it back into a dialogue about Charles, but he had other ideas.

"That might work...I've never tried that, but..." He answered, eyes darting back and forth as he thought, seeming to find the idea acceptable. Just before Charles's hands jumped back up to his temples in a motion Richard was quickly becoming familiar with, he paused, focusing on him for a bare moment. "Thank you."

Richard didn't get a chance to say anything back before Charles was back to doing whatever it was he perceived he was doing, leaving the psychologist with the unnaturally weird feeling of gratitude mixed with the sinking feeling that he may perhaps be the worst psychologist in the entire world.


	4. The Rules

It was entirely against his will that Charles hesitated when he saw Erik the next morning. He could blame it on the surprise, heading out the front door he hadn't expected Erik to be waiting patiently outside, lurking until he showed up. Surprises would be a completely natural reaction. To make it worse, Erik waited until Charles got a yard or two off before he made his presence known, knowingly mimicking that first night at the CIA base in reverse. Erik called out smugly and Charles halted on the gravel path. That was the hesitation. He didn't entirely want to turn around. He didn't want know what Erik thought of those files, didn't want to see his reaction. The thoughts were there for a second and only that, then he regained his usual calm... He just hoped Erik hadn't noticed.

Charles slowly turned around, sighed, and jammed his hands in his pockets. Erik had noticed. His smug look was now possibly more so.

"Good morning Charles," Erik smirked.

Charles didn't bother returning the look, instead he just settled on an amazingly descriptive look for one that should be so flat. It said, 'You know what you did, and you should feel bad for it, and I'm going to keep looking at you like this until you do.' Unfortunately, as weak as he may have become to Charles's guilt trips, Erik was simply too pleased that he'd gotten one over on the younger mutant that he found himself mostly immune.

"I suppose you think you're funny." Charles dropped the threat finally, wordlessly walking to his first engagement of the day and letting Erik follow along if he so chose.

"Never." Erik said sternly, "I consider myself profoundly _un_ funny."

Charles couldn't quite hide the involuntary laugh behind a cough and a hand, as much as he tried. As usual, Erik saw it as well and the smirk returned to his face quickly. It was enough for the telepath to drop the ghost of pretending to be annoyed with him. He didn't know why he tried anyway, it never did last long.

He finally just shrugged and sighed, trying to get on to the day's business, "Despite the admittedly unsettling routine of lurking outside the front door-"

"You did it first." Erik shrugged.

"It's rude to interrupt," Charles interjected without missing a beat, "Despite all that, I am glad I saw you this morning. I had something I wanted to ask of you."

Erik cut in again before he could get to the asking, "I had much the same idea."

Yet again, Charles felt abruptly put off balance, knowing where this was going. He was really starting to regret setting him the job of digging into his past. He didn't know what magical notes were in those files but all of a sudden Erik seemed to know exactly what buttons to press.

He frowned over at his friend, slowing down his walk so he could stare, "You can't possibly have finished all that already." Erik's suddenly down turned expression told him the answer and Charles shook his head and sped back up to normal, "You don't get to ask questions until you're done, my friend, it was the only rule I gave."

Erik didn't seem bothered, "You know how I am with rules, Charles."

The telepath snorted. He knew full well, he'd just been hoping this time would be different. "Either way, I brought the subject up first, I get to ask first."

Erik politely gestured his concession squaring his shoulders for whatever it was the man was going to throw at him. He wasn't quite expecting this.

"I start the others training today," Charles started evenly, already seeing the 'no' in the other mutant's face as he spoke, "I was hoping you'd help me, and them."

He was already shaking his head before Charles was done, "That would not be a good idea."

"Why not?" Charles shot back, stopping on the white stone path to face the other man, chin up in that pose that told Erik he had his mind set and there wasn't much use in fighting it.

"I..." Erik faltered, trying to word this in a way that didn't make him sound like he didn't care. He did, he truly did. He felt an attachment to these kids as fellow mutants, and he wanted to see his kind thrive and succeed. He just... "I am not the nurturing type, Charles."

"Not good enough." Charles dismissed the excuse with a shrug and waited patiently for a different one.

Erik cast about for a moment, thinking back with distant fondness for the time five minutes ago when he was in control of this conversation. Evidently it was back to business as usual now.

"They have certain opinions of me." He answered, aware of how weak that sounded, "I'd only distract them."

Charles outright laughed at that, "They don't hate you," he used the word he'd actually meant but would have felt too childish to say, "they are cautious of you."

Erik opened his mouth to challenge him, ask him how he knew this for sure. Thankfully he remembered who he was talking to before he could form the question. He turned the motion into a quiet shake of the head.

"You, to them," Charles starts, shifting on his feet like he did whenever he thought he was bringing up some possibly incendiary topic, "You are a potential for their own future. They look at you and they see what they could be. They are waiting to see what you will do with your own life so they can decide if they want to model their own after it." He shrugged lightly, "Sometimes that potential scares them."

The older mutant frowned at that, more in contemplation than displeasure. "Something tells me their thoughts were not that precise."

"No, few minds are, but it doesn't make it any less of the truth." Charles shrugged, letting him believe or not. He shifted his feet again, the rocks crunching together making the habit painfully obvious, "I won't lie though, me convincing you isn't entirely unselfish."

"Oh?" Erik smirked warily, disbelieving that the telepath even had the capability to _be_ selfish.

"Yes," He assured, "Right now we are unstable. Regardless of your thoughts about the government, when we left that base we lost the ground underneath this group. I may have given us a roof and I may be able to train them on my own, but that would be exactly it. I'd be on my own. They need something more than that, we all do."

Erik crossed his arms, already having connected this conversation to Charles's final point, "You want to start a group outside of the government."

" _Independent_ of the government," Charles corrected, "Our relations to them in the future have yet to be decided."

They both stared at each other, the silence skipping over all the chatter and warnings. Charles didn't warn him of the pressure. Didn't advise him that he had to seem infallible, that he had to be a solid figure for them. In turn Erik didn't harp on him about the darker responsibilities this might entail. The decisions that would have to be made. They didn't say it because each of them already knew every point. They'd both been thinking of it individually since this whole thing had started.

There were things, very, incredibly important things that needed to be sorted out for this to work. Issues that needed to be reconciled... but for now, they left it. The fact that the offer was on the table, despite the differences in opinion and the fact that this might very well fall through, it was interesting enough.

"Consider this a practice run for things to come. I'm not asking you to give them pointers, just be around," Charles smiled easily, "and try not to bite so much or they _will_ start being scared of you."

Erik stalled, dragging the silence out until it was almost uncomfortable, "On one condition."

"...and that is?"

The self satisfied grin cropped back up on Erik's face, "I get to break the rules."

Charles didn't bother hiding the eye roll that time, "Erik..." With a huge sigh, well aware that the both of them being immovable stubborn idiots wasn't going to get them anywhere, Charles relented. "One question per day, and _only_ that. Do we have an agreement?"

Erik smirked, "I believe we do."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Richard didn't know what to expect from this meeting. Granted, he never really knew when it came to Charles. Over the past year he'd known him, he continued to befuddle every attempt he made at an accurate diagnosis and thus his methods of trying to _cure_ him were shots in the dark at best. Richard hadn't exactly given up the ghost of curing the overarching delusion, but instead had decided to focus on the more debilitating portions. Namely, his aversion to rejoining the outside world.

As much as this whole endeavor was massively shaking his ego as a psychologist, god damn it, no patient of his was going to be walk out of his sessions as a hermit. He was going to fix at least that much. He had arrived that day with every intention of starting Charles on that path, now knowing what he did, he wondered if putting it off wasn't actually a bad idea.

He didn't bother announcing his presence as he walked up behind the boy, Charles always knew he was there anyway. Strangely, he didn't find him in one of his many usual places, in the library, reading room, or his bedroom. Instead, he was sitting outside, perched on one of the low stone garden walls near the fountain. It was a small change, but one that troubled him.

"I see your mother is home," He commented with a sigh, pulling over an iron garden chair next to Charles's spot on the fence, "is it some kind of an occasion?"

"She has a business meeting," He answered neutrally, looking over his shoulder at the psychologist for only a moment.

"Yes, with Mr. Marko," Richard mumbled the words, trying to be impartial, "I was a little surprised she allowed him to be here while I am."

Charles turned reluctantly so he could face the man, "Mother is testing him. Seeing how he reacts to me."

Richard raised an eyebrow, somewhat surprised. The two of them had been in the parlor when he'd entered the house. Yes, it did look like a business meeting, but he'd have to be a complete idiot to see the undertone of it. The small smiles, the brush of a hand on an arm. It had been close to two years since her husband's death so he couldn't expect her to be alone for the rest of her life, all the same, he wished she had a better sense of timing.

"Did he pass her test?" He hedged curiously.

Charles tilted his head in consideration, "So far, yes."

"What about you? Does he pass in your eyes?"

The boy took a considerably longer amount of time to answer that, looking over at the wall through to the parlor like he could see through to the other side of the house.

"He's using her," Charles finally said, so quiet Richard could barely hear, "he has ideas but no money. He doesn't know what to do with me, though. Mother didn't tell him specifically what's wrong with me, though he's curious. He'll probably corner you later and try to get it out of you."

Richard puffed up, suddenly offended as if the man had already done what Charles had predicted. That was another thing he had learned not to question anymore. If the boy said something was going to happen, if very often did.

"However..." Charles continued, head tilted again, "Mother is using him too. People don't take her seriously in meetings. Kurt does... and he makes her smile. I can't remember the last time she did that."

The psychiatrist deflated like a stuck balloon, "Seems like a dangerous arrangement to me."

Charles actually laughed for a second, "Don't worry. Mother is twice as smart as he is."

"No doubt," Richard chuckled. As prim and proper as Sharon Xavier was, she certainly wasn't beyond teaching a lesson to anyone who thought they could outpace her because of her gender or for any other reason. He really doubted this Marko person knew what he was getting himself into...

"You wanted to ask me something." Charles brought him back from his thoughts with another one of his non-questions.

"I did," Richard took in a deep breath and rocked back in his chair, "I spoke with one of my colleagues about your case, without details of course, and he made a suggestion I think we should try."

Charles's look was cautious at best, outright suspicious at worst.

"He suggested we tackle your problem by gradually introducing you to ...hurdles, so to speak."

"Hurdles..." Charles frowned.

"Yes," Richard locked his fingers together in his lap and shrugged as if this wasn't a huge thing at all, "You say these voices get worse the more people that are around."

Charles shrugged noncommittally, shoulders curling in around him as the conversation went on.

"We would start in town, take a drive down a street, a walk in the park."

"...and where would we end?" Charles asked stiffly.

"In New York at your old schoo-"

Without any warning whatsoever Charles stood up on the wall and hopped off, wordlessly walking away so fast it was only a few seconds from a full on run.

"Oh, come now!" Richard huffed as he pushed himself up to his own feet and followed him. He passed the long row of windows and around the corner, the boy ahead of him continuing down around without any care who was following. "Charles, it may seem an insurmountable task now, but that's the whole point of this. You build up, you learn to become stronger."

"Well, I don't _want_ to be stronger." Charles tossed childishly over his shoulder skipping up over a low wall and to the lawn beyond, forcing Richard to make a huge loop back through a wrought iron gate.

"That's just ridiculous," Richard huffed, his knees complaining at all the exercise, "That is the whole point of human existence, to become better. To grow."

Charles tossed a glare over his shoulder, staying just ahead of the man, "You don't even know what you're talking about."

"I have a PhD that says differently." Richard sniped back primly, "but since you seem so assured of that. Tell me. Tell me what I don't know and you do. What could possibly be so terrible that you want to trap yourself here with no hope for a future?"

Charles wheeled around suddenly, " **Stop**."

To Richard's surprise, he did, right there. His feet glued to the ground, his words died in his throat, and a peculiar fuzzy feeling descended on him. He was forced to look down at the boy in front of him and witness the angriest look he'd ever seen on Charles's face. His shoulders were hitched up, his fists clenched, every line of him was tense and shaking...

Then he just crumbled.

Charles staggered back a step and the fuzzy feeling lifted. For some reason beyond what Richard had any context for, the boy looked like he'd just committed a mortal sin and felt the full weight of it. They stood there in silence only broken by the far away sounds of the birds that had taken up residence nearby.

"What I am is bad enough and you want to make it _stronger_..." Charles whispered and shook his head slowly, "Just leave me alone."

That time, Richard didn't follow him. He just simply watched as the boy disappeared into the house. Confused, he finally trundled back up to the house, pulling open one of the glass doors to find himself face to face with slicked back black hair and a politician's smile.

"Dr. Brexton! I was hoping I'd get a chance to speak with you, call me Kurt."


	5. Trust

"Why didn't you just prove it to him?" Erik questioned out of the blue, pulling Charles away from the chart of numbers Hank had asked him to look through.

"I'm sorry, what?" The telepath looked across the room to the other man, pencil hovering over the paper. There was only really one point in which Charles didn't have his full attention on his surroundings, and that was when he was working on some paper or problem. Raven had been using it to her advantage to sneak questions on him for years, and the smirk on Erik's face told him that she'd probably shared that secret with him.

"Why didn't you just tell that man about your mutation?" Erik repeated with deliberate solidarity, something lit behind his eyes that spoke of no good.

Charles sighed and set his pencil down, giving the conversation his full attention, "That's the question you chose?"

"Yes," Erik shrugged a shoulder, "You're stalling."

"I am not," Charles laughed, even though he technically was, "I am just asking because you seem to have chosen this question not based on something you _want_ to know but something you believe you already do."

"Doesn't make it any less relevant." Erik answered coolly, though the slight pause beforehand told Charles he was exactly right. "What stopped you from just reading this man's mind and proving you weren't mad from the first day? Or why not your mother for that matter."

It was about then that Charles picked up on his line of thinking and let out a sigh. This had been why he'd wanted Erik to get through the whole story before he'd get a chance to answer. He knew that the older mutant would try to spin it in a way favorable to him. Yet again, he was intending on doing something similar so he didn't know if he could really blame the man.

"You think I didn't trust them."

"Did you?" Erik pried, fearless of the warning look Charles had centered on him.

"You're actually going to try to make an argument out of something I thought when I was _ten_." Charles said incredulously.

Erik had the sense to smile a little at that, but he refused to be distracted, "Unless I heard wrong. You've been preaching secrecy to Raven for years. You only broke that just recently. I fail to see the distinction."

Despite what could very easily be misconstrued as an accusation, Charles found it hard to contain the returned smile. It was the same thrill that rose up in him every time he found himself debating one topic or another with Erik. It was a test of wills and thinking, a challenge, and really there was very few things he enjoyed more than that. Somehow these arguments always ended up half exhilarating, half eternally frustrating, but they were never, ever futile.

"Before... this," Charles said carefully, "I couldn't have hoped for the scale that these mutations had spread. I knew it was an inevitability that there would be more of us, so I dedicated the last decade to researching this. I wanted to give a ground to future mutants so that they didn't have to start from scratch like I did."

Charles took a deep breath, knowing this was going to be the tricky part to navigate, "I didn't make myself known because I wanted to give our kind as much time as possible to find our own before we were forced to defend it. So, to answer your question... no, perhaps I didn't trust humanity in the short term, but given time and reason..." He shook his head, stopping that line right there, knowing that was no way to try to convince the other man, "When Moira came, I knew my time was up. I saw what Shaw was planning, I knew that, no matter who they sent they would be helpless without us. I also knew that I could _not_ let them only interpret us through Shaw's actions."

Erik frowned at that, "Noble as always, Charles, but you can't expect them to just forget."

"No," The telepath agreed with a shrug, "Mutants started a war, mutants avert it. It will only put us on neutral ground at best. We have the responsibility from there to prove ourselves further."

"What do you expect us to do? Hand out balloons and puppies?" Erik scoffed, "You spend all your time proving yourself to humanity and they'll spend all theirs finding ways to despise you."

Charles couldn't help but flash a confident smile again, "You misunderstand me. We would be proving this to ourselves, not them. Humanity has no impression of us, true, but we have no impression of ourselves either. We have the chance to set the example for an entire species, that is this generation's choice. We can rise above the base animal instinct that turns fear into violence, or we can let monsters like Shaw represent us. Our powers are not our mark in evolution, it's our will to change. Stepping even a bit closer to a world where there is no prejudice... _That_ is what I want."

Erik leaned back slowly, face so unreadable that Charles could only just contain his urge to reach inside his mind, "I... would want to see that world." He said finally, voice grave but entirely genuine, "but what use is it to have a utopia if we die creating it?"

A timid knock interrupted any attempt at a response, shortly followed by Hank poking his head past the door, glasses ever so slightly askew.

"Professor, did you get a chance to look over those notes?" He asked after a quick, curious glance at the two of them.

Charles already had them in his hand before he asked, standing up to hand them over, "I don't know why you bother having me look these over Hank, it was flawless as usual."

"An extra pair of eyes never hurts," Hank shrugged and ducked his head, but the pleased smile was still obvious, "Everything's ready for tomorrow, by the way. Did you, uh, warn Sean?"

"We'll tell him tomorrow morning," Charles smiled reassuringly, "No need to make him lose any sleep."

Erik leaned over the back of the couch curiously, eyebrows raised in an intentionally unsubtle question.

"Will you be joining us tomorrow?" Charles turned to him.

"What's the occasion?" Erik asked.

"We're tossing Sean out of the third floor window," Hank supplied a little too eagerly.

That sharp smile rose up on Erik's face in a second, "Wouldn't miss it."

Charles rolled his eyes and held the door back over to the teenager, "Yes, then, thank you very much, Hank. You should probably get some sleep as well, busy day tomorrow."

With the downright lie that he'd actually attempt sleeping that night when all of them knew he was going to head right back down to the makeshift lab and fall asleep against a microscope, Hank left, and when he did Charles pinned that 'you know what you did' look back on Erik.

"You were the one who suggested I get more involved." Erik said, "and _you're_ the one shoving a teenager out of a window."

"You don't have to be so gleeful about it," Charles shook his head in amusement, leaning back over to collect the two books he'd been leafing through on the end table, stacking them neatly with papers holding his place.

"You never did exactly answer my question." Erik reminded him. The telepath couldn't help but smile, caught in his avoidance.

"No, I suppose I didn't," He sighed, "At first I pretended I was mad because I thought it would be easier. I didn't want my powers. Then I continued on because, no, I didn't trust them enough to know how they'd react. However, those were all mostly secondary. In then end... I think I was just lonely." He smiled to himself sadly, hand ghosting over the stack of books, "If I wasn't insane, I had no need for a therapist and my mother would have no reason to care. So I pretended for a long, long time."

Charles sneaked a look over at his friend, not quite sure of how he'd respond. He'd heard his speeches to Raven and Hank about accepting yourself. Abrasive as they were, he couldn't find any argument with his words, and he didn't really want to anymore. His aversion to being seen as a mutant and hiding had been something out of necessity, to keep life simple, now he didn't know if that was the right choice anymore.

He was entirely relieved, when he saw Erik's expression. There wasn't even a hint of admonishment, instead it was more like a ridged compassion with an edge of something else. Charles reached out just enough to understand it and found that the edge was raw protectiveness.

"What changed?" Erik asked quietly.

This time there wasn't a hint of sadness in Charles's smile, "Raven, of course."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Erik stashed the box of files in the reading room he and Charles had claimed for themselves, blatantly ignoring the look the telepath gave him as he did so. It really was the logical choice, really. It was the only place in the house the children had wordlessly decided was off limits to them, wanting to give the two of them a rare moment of peace. That respect alone would keep them from digging around in there. Plus, it was easily accessible.

Anytime they had a spare moment between sessions of pushing Sean off tall platforms, coaxing Hank out of his shoes, or chasing after Alex with a fire extinguisher, Erik would come up to the room and pick up exactly where he left off. At first, he'd had a lot more time to do so, but after only several days the children had started to warm up to him, they'd actually started to identify his dark humor as what it was instead of something to be perturbed by.

The whole affair came with the same surprising ease as when Erik did anything with Charles. Despite the short time they'd known each other, they were both keenly aware of each others' strengths and weaknesses. After Charles coaxed some confidence out of the children, it was Erik's job to push them to the brink, and if that made them falter, Charles would seamlessly step back in and build them back up again. Sean had taken to referring to Erik only as his new title Bad Cop because of it.

He was doing something that had taken Shaw years to do and done it in days without having to resort to his methods. He'd never say it out loud, if he had to think back on his life, this would probably have to be one of his proudest moments. Frankly, it was _exhilarating,_ and occasionally, whenever Charles had one of those kid in a candy store looks on his face, Erik would find it echoed on his own.

He was more surprised about himself than Charles. He knew the telepath was having similar thoughts all on his own. Judging from what he'd learned in those files, Charles's road to mastering his powers had been just as difficult as Erik's, and just as long. Even though the files were strictly in the point of view of an idiot, Erik was starting to see the subtle reasoning for what he did.

After a very young Raven had taken up the spot as his sister, an event that had evidently stunned the psychologist, Charles had called him back and started the suggested treatment. The gradual slope of dealing with more and more minds, disguised as behavioral therapy, was a surprisingly successful tactic. It seemed that not only was Charles trying to deal with the sheer weight of the minds around him but he was intentionally doing it while striking up deep conversations about psychology to push himself even further.

It was something he saw Charles doing all the time now and took completely for granted... and it didn't seem to come so easily at first, separating his attention to two distinct points. Browsing through the idiot psychologist's records, Erik found records of two times he'd gone unresponsive and nearly catatonic keeping the voices out. Mostly when they jumped in scale, getting close and closer to the thick of New York City. Even if he avoided that particular side effect, Charles would nearly always walk away from the encounters with a splitting headache, to the point where Erik actually found one of the old prescription pill bottles in the box of files.

To be able to shorten the suffering of dealing with their gifts to other mutants, to spare them of that. To give them a place where they didn't have to be alone. He knew it was just as gratifying to Charles as it was to him.

The files hadn't quite lived up to the intended purpose Erik had given them, even with the several questions he'd used up trying to prove his point, Charles remained as immovable in his ideals as he was. However, the benefits seemed to make up for it. Charles was always a mystery, to be a step closer to understanding was something he didn't know if he could give up.

However... there was one distinct question that had been bugging him this entire time. Without fail, whenever Charles looked over to see him reading one of those files, there was a distinct flinch. A masterfully hidden one of course, but Erik was used so inspiring such flinches in Nazi sympathizers that he could see it from across the room. The reaction shocked him.

Erik had seen the younger mutant use himself as a living deterrent for Alex's training, stare down the brunt force of the CIA, and infiltrate a Russian base... and the sight of him _reading_ is the only time he's really seen the instinct in Charles's eyes turn from fight to flight.

That night Charles had stayed out helping Moira patch a nice gash on Sean's arm that the youngest mutant swore looked exactly like Kentucky. It turned out that, while Sean had figured out how to fly using his powers, landing was something else entirely. It gave Erik a few moment's head start, leaving him to pull out the last notebook in the stack. He arranged the contents of the box so that it would be obvious which one he was reading, sat back, and waited until he heard the telltale signs of the telepath's footsteps.

Charles opened the door, caught sight of the reading materials, and there was the flinch which was then immediately covered up.

"If this what it's like when I'm reading your minds," Charles joked, "then I am truly and profoundly sorry." He brushed past the topic to grab the last book he'd been working on, intent on making that the only comment on the topic he was going to make. Erik had other ideas.

"Why are you doing this to yourself, Charles?" Erik prodded without any preface.

The telepath frowned slightly in confusion, "Doing what?"

Erik sighed in a way Charles had assumed he reserved only for the children when they were acting up. He held up the last file illustratively, "You hate that I'm reading this, so why are you letting me?"

The telepath turned suddenly serious, setting his book back on the table as he knew he wouldn't be reading it, "Is that your question for the day?"

Erik nodded solidly and gestured for Charles to sit across from him in the other armchair, the chess table set off to the side for the moment. He took the offer gladly, falling into it in a way that showed the events of the day had been more exhausting than he had let on.

"When I said we were all going to train, I did mean _all_ of us." Charles started tiredly.

Erik waited for an explanation as he hadn't seen Charles training himself once in the past week. He was too busy training everyone else.

There was a flicker of a smile at Erik's non-answer before Charles continued, "Being a telepath is like any other mutation we've seen so far. It's lead by emotions and the control you have over them. The difference then becomes that, since I feel other people's emotions as my own, the telepathy doesn't differentiate between them either."

Erik gave his version of a gape, which was really only a raising of the eyebrows, "You mean other people can hinder your powers."

"If I lose control of them, then yes, and losing control is perhaps the worst thing I could do. It's a thin line between me reading minds and tearing them apart, and I can _not_ risk that." Charles stared sternly, the force in his voice palpable but obviously self directed, "In order to prevent that from happening I can't have any ghosts, Erik, and this... this is the only one I have left."

"...and I am to help with that." Erik managed to breath out the word, even as the full ramifications of what he said became clear to him. Charles wanted him, _him_ who had openly expressed dissenting views to his own to know the one thing that could incapacitate his powers. That could stop him from fighting back... He was almost scared to ask the next question, "You trust me that much?"

"Completely." Charles said the word in such a way that it allowed no doubt.

In that moment Erik wanted to shake the naivete out of the telepath. Did he not realize how dangerous this was? Who he was talking to? He was a murderer, capable of killing and with every intention to do it again, and he was just going to entrust him with this? He didn't even bother the hide the look, actually scoffing. "Your trust will get you killed one day, Charles."

As always though, Charles was looking at him with one of those tired, but entirely confident smiles.

"I know you, Erik Lehnsher." Charles said, "You... I have never seen a worse set of circumstances than yours Erik, and yet you still take joy in the making these students happier, more secure. I have seen lesser men, with lesser conflicts in their life turn to the worst kind of person, devoid of anything good about them. I have seen evil, Erik. You are quite the opposite... and since you can't seem to see that capability in yourself, I will do it for you."

Erik was still, letting the words wash over him as he always did. Part of him wanting to accept it, the rest... the rest just wanted to _survive_. If he had such high expectations they could never be met and his life would only be a misery. He shook his head, "There are certain things no man can come back from, things that cannot be forgiven in others or ourselves. You expect too much."

And there it was, the flinch, "My friend, for both our sakes let us hope that's not the case."

Erik paused, "What could you have possibly done that is that unforgivable?"

For a moment it looked like Charles was going to answer, then he shook his head resolutely, "You've used your question for the day, Erik. When you've finished that last file, I'll tell you."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Well isn't this charming," Angel announced all of a sudden, eyes zipping around the inside of the submarine as if she was seeing it for the first time and leaving her new compatriots only with the option of staring at her in confusion. She laughed outright at their reactions before turning the look back onto herself, tracing a finger along the tattoo wrapped around her shoulder, "would one of you be a doll and fetch Shaw for me. He'll want to hear this."

Riptide never did quite recover from his confusion until Azazel landed a sharp punch to his arm, he only said one word, "Telepath," before nodding for the other mutant to get Shaw.

Angel smiled at him, eyelashes fluttering at him girlishly at about the speed of her wings. Azazel's red lip turned up a bare centimeter, but it accurately depicted his disgust.

"You are not Angel." Azazel said in heavily accented english, "You are not Frost, either."

She merely popped her shoulders up in a sickeningly cute shrug that Angel herself would have been disgusted at.

Shaw probably chose wisely to walk in then, massive metal helmet perched on his head, shadowing the majority of his face. The confident smirk was still intensely clear, however, and that was all he needed. The telepath in Angel's body had the sense to narrow her eyes at the monstrosity, turning the younger mutants lips down into a pout.

"Nice hat." She said glumly.

"Thank you," Shaw returned easily, "It came not a moment too soon. I seem to find myself swimming in telepaths lately. I'm just trying to figure out which one you are...You're not-"

"The one who's teamed up with your metal manipulator? No, but that does bring us to why I'm here." The telepath smiled with Angel's face, "I have a proposition for you."


	6. The End is the Beginning

Richard Brexton stared at his charge with the same solemn look of a faithful seeing eye dog, just waiting for the boy to trip or collapse at any moment. Sure, these exercises had put the boy (could he still call him a boy? He was fifteen after all and he'd never much acted like a child in the first place) in a bad place physically. He'd determined them as both psychosomatic and anxiety based, causing the now infamous headaches on every trip as well as a grab bag of other assorted ticks. Still, that was nothing compared to this. On those trips Charles had remained stubbornly in good spirits, sometimes obviously forcing it even if it wasn't true, and the symptoms had been manageable.

Today though, Charles looked like he was about ready to topple over at any moment, eyes unfocused, breathing labored, and skin unusually pale. It almost made him want to order the driver to take them right back that instant but every time he brought it up, Charles quickly shot it down, insisting he was fine.

Outside the black car, the streets of New York City passed by, tall and clustered with buildings, people impeding their progress as they darted between traffic, dead set on getting to wherever it was they intended to go, damn everyone else.

They passed an especially tall building, and Charles flinched, tucking his hands tightly under each arm, keeping them from clasping near his head unbidden.

Richard had asked on several occasions over the years why he was fighting that habit so badly. The first couple times had been turned away with jokes about how his mother thought it looked ridiculous and forbade it... though he wasn't entirely sure that was just a joke. Ever since Sharon had gotten married, her business taking off again, and then Raven joining the odd little family... well, he simply wouldn't put anything past her. He was more than sure Sharon Xavier had some neurosis of her own, not that she'd ever let him speak to her about it.

The last time he'd asked about it had been a few months prior, on their last big population skip from suburb to city streets. Charles had probably been overwhelmed and had only been half listening, that was probably why he actually told the truth. Or, to be specific, the truth that his delusions lead him to believe.

He'd said that the hand motion focused the voices to only one and closed the others out, but he wasn't doing it now because it defeated the whole purpose, didn't it. Then he proceeded to wring out every drop of information of a new psychological study Richard had mentioned earlier as if he hadn't mentioned it at all.

It was right about then he worried again that he was actually encouraging the delusions. That was why today was so important. He hoped to put a dent in what he perceived to be the origin of this whole fiasco. The last stop. Richard checked his watch again and eyed the street signs.

"It's another two blocks," Charles said abruptly, eyes flickering over to his for only a moment before returning to the seat back in front of him.

Richard laughed lightly, slicking back his remaining gray hair in a nervous habit, "You still remember how to get there?"

"Not really..." He shrugged noncommittally but didn't offer any other explanations.

The car rolled forward again, the light changing to the correct color. Just as Richard leaned farther towards the window to catch a glimpse of their destination, Charles leaned away from it.

 _We shouldn't be here._

The thought came unbidden, the tinge of something foreign to it, but it was so fast he wasn't sure he didn't just imagine it. He looked over at Charles curiously to catch the edge of a guilty look before it was quickly covered up.

"We're here..." Charles said miserably, nodding towards the window and he was right.

Just at the end of the street was a large brown brick building, at least three stories tall if not four, ringed in a wrought iron fence that somehow looked both intimidating and weirdly academic. The courtyard was friendly enough, though deserted, they deliberately came at a time when all the students were safely tucked away in their classrooms.

"Hm," Richard frowned loudly.

Charles made an attempt at giving him a smile, though it certainly didn't hit the note it usually did, "What?"

Richard tossed a look back over at him, "For all the buildup, I expected it to be made of human bones and have eternal hell flames sprouting from the roof."

The teenager squared an exasperated yet patient look on him, "I told you, it's not the school that's the problem."

"Forgive me," he chortled, "The Shadow King, was it?"

The exasperation turned into a full blown sigh, "I didn't pick the name."

Richard didn't answer. It was a conversation they'd had many times before and it was the one point where Charles simply wouldn't budge. He knew this Shadow King existed and he asserted that he was not to be messed with. He'd even gone so far to make Richard promise he wouldn't go anywhere near this building without him and since Charles wasn't inclined to be there either... that meant never. Strangely, Richard had felt compelled to keep his promise, only contacting the school by letter and phone, getting reports and making today's appointment.

This Shadow King was an riddle though. Richard attributed his character to Charles's infatuation with chess, a pastime he had shared with is father before his death. As far as Richard could tell, Charles related to both a white pawn _and_ the black king. He was nearly powerless, limited in choice, helpless to protect his King. He also considered himself the driving force that caused the white king's demise. The Shadow King was every dark thought, the very personification of his sickness, and that was why Charles was so terrified of it. It was also why Richard had every intention of slaying that king this day, if he was feeling dramatic

It was an unusual motif as delusions went, usually preferring to stick to religious tangents, but it suited him well enough. A unique delusion for a unique child.

The car pulled over gracefully in front of the building, and Charles let out an obvious calming breath. That he wasn't trying to hide it was a very drastic sign and it worried him.

"Are you ready then?" Richard coaxed.

"Not at all, to be honest," A short laugh echoed out of the teenager, he sat frozen, staring at the building outside the window, "but does that make a difference?"

Richard sat back solemnly, "Yes. If you don't want to, we can go back home right now."

For a breathless second it looked like he was actually going to accept the offer, instead he forcefully shut his eyes and gave his head a stern shake, looking annoyed with himself. "No, no." He repeated it, the word coming out with more confidence the second time. When he reopened his eyes a look of pure determination had overwritten any fear, any obvious symptoms of anxiety gone in a moment of focus, "Shall we?" He gestured for the door.

Richard took him up on it before the determination could wear off, though he was sure that wouldn't happen for some time. If there was anything he knew about Charles Xavier after all this time was that it was nigh impossible to shake him when he set his mind on something.

Charles helped him out of the car while somehow ignoring the fact that he had to, to save Richard's pride and they both paused at the open gate again, staring up at the building.

"If you could do me a favor, Doctor," Charles looked over at him with keen blue eyes.

"Depends." Richard answered as he always did, earning him a half smile from the young man.

"Stick close, would you?" Charles practically implored him, as if their lives depended on it. Richard always did have trouble turning that tone of voice down.

"I think I can manage that." He returned and gestured for Charles to enter the building first.

The empty halls had an oppressive echo to them, their footsteps seeming to multiply from just the two of them into an entire group. Charles seemed to be deaf to it, though he was obviously listening for something. Richard reached out with a hand but didn't quite touch Charles's arm, knowing the proximity alone would be enough to guide him down a corridor to their right. The library opened before them. Square windows lining one wall, desks lined up neatly underneath them.

According to the reports he'd gotten, of all the places, this is where the "outbursts" had happened the most. Whether that was for some specific reason or the fact that Charles had just been in the room more often than all the others, he wasn't sure. Also what he wasn't sure of was what he expected to happen when he entered.

They stopped in the middle of the room, a circle of bookcases arching around them in diagonal lines. Richard watched his charge avidly, turning to walk a little half circle to the other side. Charles ignored that as well.

"It's been years, Charles," Richard tried coaxing his attention.

Another quick flash of one of those exasperated looks was all he got before Charles was back to listening to whatever internal soundtrack he had on. Richard, of course, was never one to take good advice, and pressed on anyway.

"There's nothing here to harm you anymore, there never was."

The teenager sighed through his nose, jaw clenching ever so slightly, "Believe me, I would love if that were the case, but he didn't strike me as the sort to give up."

"Those were memories of a very disturbed child, half a decade ago," Richard pressed in his own exasperation, "You have a head for science, Charles, as a scientist you cannot let previous, unreplicated experiments color your current one."

A confident smile flickered onto Charles's face, "Scientists also don't cherry pick data simply because it fails to fit their preconceived notions, Doctor Brexton. That's actually a tactic of _pseudoscience."_ Richard didn't miss the the hint of a lecture in his voice and he tossed his hands up. He was right of course, he should have known better than to use that argument, "If you would just give me a moment, I _have_ to be certain he's not here."

Richard grumbled, "Maybe the Shadow King left a forwarding address."

"This would be much easier if-" Charles froze mid sentence and lurched out, grabbing onto Richard's exposed forearm, two fingers up to his temple in a flash. Richard tensed on reflex but Charles offered no explanation.

Curiously and alarmingly quickly, Richard became aware of faces staring at them from around the ring of bookcases, pale and dead eyed. They just peeked around corners, showing a singular white of an eye, the slant of an emotionless mouth, deathly slow and alternating all around them so he couldn't entirely keep his eye on all of them moving at once or really tell how many there truly were. It was truly the eeriest thing he had ever seen in his life, the very air held a choking atmosphere of terror he hadn't been aware descended. Panic filled his veins in a split second then...

Charles's grip on his wrist tightened for a moment and the terror abruptly subsided leaving him breathless but once again in control of his wits. He looked over sharply at Charles, who was placidly staring at the halfway hidden faces without giving anything away. He didn't look the littlest bit terrified, but the grip on Richard's arm spoke differently.

"You came back." Every face spoke in unison... then they grinned like skeletons, all action no emotion.

Charles breathed in a precise, even breath, "Despite my best efforts... yes, I did." He addressed no face in particular, even as they were stepping out, revealing students, dressed primly in their gray uniforms. Boys and girls no older than twelve, yet they looked for anything like marionettes instead of living beings.

"I was looking for you for so long, but you seemed to be hidden away somewhere. I suppose you are to thank for this," The children turned in unison to Richard, he had absolutely no idea what to say in return, he stood frozen, useless. The children smiled again before their faces turned abruptly surprised, the attention snapping back to Charles, "You are shielding him."

The teenager didn't dignify that with a response, and the children didn't seem to require it anyway.

"Oh, Charlie. You've grown up so well. Improved so much." The children crooned, then they looked angry, "This is a very serious problem."

Charles's grip tightened again, the only outward flinch he showed, "You _will_ let us go." It wasn't a request. The children ignored it, continuing on.

"You see a telepath of moderate power is a tool." The children explained calmly, "You have surpassed that, and probably will go further. You are now a threat. I can't have a competing warlord taking a swipe at my throne, Charlie, you understand?"

Charles's jaw was ridged eyes far off in a place Richard had no chance of seeing. Then he heard a voice, unmistakably Charles's, yet he'd been watching specifically and his mouth hadn't moved a centimeter.

/ _When I say run, run._ /

"Oh god," Richard managed to get out, staring at the teenager with a whole new perspective, "It's true."

"Of course it is." The children supplied, a few laughed. Richard barely heard it.

"What _are_ you?"

The comment visibly struck Charles, sending a shuddering breath through him. In an instant he looked betrayed, the grip on Richard's arm slackening and the previous inexplicable terror creeping back in. Then he snapped back, and Richard's mind was his own again.

"Something new..." Charles answered honestly, searching for something in Richard as he spoke and, from the disappointed look on his face, not finding it.

"Telepath." The children once again verbalized the actual word, "He can see into your mind, twist it, ruin it... own it."

Charles looked as angry as he had ever seen him, "I would never-"

The children laughed in a suddenly loud cacophony and the teenager stopped his protest. I wouldn't do any good. Instead he turned back to looking at nothing, eyes hooded.

"If you are going to do something, do it, just let the children go, you don't need them." It was less of a command this time but it was no less solid. The same stubborn determination was there, sure as always.

"I'll let them go when I feel like it," They said, but the words were echoed by a deeper voice this time. A set of footsteps faded in, the beams of light hitting the figure pleasantly. He was older, but not to the point of it being a weakness. All tan skin, salt and pepper hair, and khaki clothing. He looked entirely too pleased with himself.

Charles stared directly at him, " _Now_."

"No." The man leaned into the word insolently.

All the warning they got was a slight adjustment of Charles's fingers on his temple before the man lurched back, looking very much like he'd been playing a tug of war game and the opposing team had suddenly let go. In the next second the children all slowly crumpled to the floor, eyes falling closed. For a moment Richard feared they were dead but the rise and fall of their chests became apparent soon after.

The Shadow King (Richard couldn't stop himself from using the name anymore) strangely looked surprised and more than a little annoyed, glaring down at his puppets and then up at Charles.

"You constantly surprise me," He growled, as if that was the worst insult he could ever give. He tilted his chin upward pridefully, "You may go."

Even Charles seemed surprised at this, "Excuse me?"

"You. May. Go." He spelled it out incessantly, "You came uninvited, I'm not ready for you yet. Don't worry, I'll see you again."

That time, he wasn't taking no for an answer, eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly. Abruptly, Charles hit the floor, his legs giving out from underneath him, hand changing from his temple to harshly clutch the side of head. Whatever it was, he got control of himself quickly and blocked it back out but it didn't do much good. Even as temporary as it was, when Charles looked back up, the man was gone. Richard had missed the exit as well, too occupied with the teenager's grip on his arm attempting to pull him entirely off his feet.

Charles stared at the spot he'd been in for a moment that felt like hours, a million thoughts churning behind his eyes that Richard had no hope of identifying and suddenly didn't even want to try to. Ever so slowly, the teenager's grip loosened from his arm and as soon as he was free, Richard staggered back a step.

"I..." Charles attempted, eyes concentrated on him a way he'd seen a million times before but now made goosebumps crawl up and down his arms. Had he been reading his mind all this time? Was he now?

Looking extremely disappointed, Charles pushed himself to his feet and walked out. Richard followed out of duty and the trip back was completely silent. Without a word, the psychologist parted ways at the first opportunity. Without any hesitation, he quit that day.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 _Sharon, I send this last journal to you out of respect to our arrangement and your privacy. I also feel this is something I could not live with myself if I kept from you. You need to be aware of the circumstances you live in._

 _With that said, I fully intend on retiring. I don't think you'll be hearing from me again._

 _Dr. Richard Brexton_

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Erik hurled the notebook in the box so hard that it toppled over, not even a fraction of his anger spent in the motion. He paced angrily around his room, hands clenched in strict fists, steps deliberate and weighty. He wanted to twist away every piece of metal he could feel rattling around the room, had he not started to so closely associate the house and it's owner, he probably would have done so already. So far, he'd restrained himself to mangling only a few things, the footing of the lamp, the latch on the closet door, the handle on the dresser.

He dropped his control on them sharply and banged the heels of his hands down on the windowsill, staring out at the dimly lit silhouette of the satellite dish, turned in its new direction. The sight calmed him, at least outwardly, the only indicator of his current mood was the tense line of his jaw.

The light knock on the door came just as he expected it, the telepath not even waiting for him to answer before he stepped in. Of course that could have something to do with the way the door was hanging uselessly on only one pitifully twisted hinge.

"I've finished your assignment," Erik commented in a tone that was both infuriated and completely placid at the same time.

Charles tucked his hands in his pockets next to the door, leaving him his room, "I know."

"What use..." Erik bit off the phrase, sighing irritably and leaning into his palms, the iron frame on the windows bending ever so slightly, the glass creaking in warning, "Why do you defend them?" He asked harshly, turning finally to look at the professor.

"An argument for another time, and another time after that, and after that." Not only did he not answer, he had the gall to try to be slightly humorous. Sure enough they would be having this conversation again and again, and weirdly he seemed like he was looking forward to it. That was probably a more potent anger resolvent than anything, his mind bending enthusiasm for this.

"I'm glad you think this is a good time to be cute, Charles." Erik warned halfheartedly and the telepath called him on his bluff with a lopsided smile.

"I'm sorry I ruined your mood," the telepath shrugged, "I will do my utmost to remain not cute, if it will make you feel better. For the sake of the furniture, at least."

"Are you going to answer my question now?" Erik brushed past the comment, refusing to be drawn into banter so he could stubbornly cling to his remaining anger.

Charles took a step closer, drawing his hands back out of his pockets and squaring his shoulders. "If you'll let me," he raised a hand illustratively, "I'd like to simply _show_ you..."


	7. The Atrocity

The sensation of experiencing memories through the potent lens of telepathic manipulation was becoming a bit of an old hat to Erik. Not that the experience made it any easier to comprehend, in fact it almost made it more difficult to predict. Emma Frost had been the first one to violently introduce him to the idea. She had clawed into the darkest corners of his mind and raked every raw, painful memory of Shaw forward into the light. It was so vivid it was physically painful, like he was living through every memory all in one time, eyes becoming blind to everything but the memories.

The second time had only been that morning, and he couldn't imagine how it could have been any more different than the first. Predictably, Charles had a much gentler hand with it, though the memory of his mother was no less vivid. He didn't know whether it was because he wasn't fighting the man or if Charles was somehow guiding the experience but it was more natural. Like he'd called up the memory of his own volition, the images rising up from the water, gradually becoming clearer the more he accepted it. Even with that concession, he still felt raw afterward, left without the buffer years of distance should have allowed him.

So when Charles offered this same experience as an option, not to view Erik's memories, but his own the full brunt of what that would mean could be no more apparent.

"Is this some kind of penance for you?" Erik bit, anger still burning at the edges of his senses from earlier.

Charles frowned, confused, "I... What?"

Erik snorted at the faked confusion, "You know what. You are trying to put yourself though whatever it is you are going to show me, _again_."

The sheer surprise did not fade off of the telepath's face, instead it started to incongruously mix with a smile, "I thank you for your concern but-"

"But nothing. I've had my worst memories used on me, Charles. Having to sit there feeling everything over again without any power to stop the events... and you want to voluntarily put yourself through that." Erik's glare was sharp, "Maybe you are insane."

Charles took in a breath like he was going to say something but thought better of it at the last second. Instead, he laughed breathily, eyes darting up at the ceiling not to seek some kind of divine inspiration, but more to avoid the glare Erik was stubbornly trying to use on him. The moment to think wasn't a bad idea either.

"This..." Charles cast around for the right way to make him understand how important this was, some way to make it relate. A dangerous thought occurred to him. He turned it over in his mind cautiously, knowing this wasn't perhaps the most wise analogy... but it _would_ be the most effective. He flicked his gaze over to Erik was sitting, throwing caution to the metaphorical wind, and went for it anyway.

"I need you to understand," He started again, " _This_ , this is my Shaw. I can't ignore it, I can't insulate myself from it. I must face this without reservation before I can let the rest of my life truly begin."

Erik rocked back in his seat ever so slightly, obviously getting the point but still not wanting to condone anything.

"You understand..." Charles added, the comment redundant but necessary. Erik sighed in defeat waving his hand in a vague imitation of Charles's telltale sign of his telepathy.

"Just let it be known I think this is a terrible idea." Erik remarked gruffly.

"Don't worry," The telepath assured, lifting his hand as he spoke, "I won't be alone."

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It was amazing how a room so amazingly empty could seem so claustrophobic. There was nothing but him, the antique décor and furnishings, and then the completely incongruous metal hospital bed. It was meant to be a temporary arrangement, of course. Sharon Xavier—no, _Marko,_ simply couldn't stand to spend any more time at the hospital, she'd told everyone the sheer embarrassment of it would kill her on its own. So they'd set her up in this first floor room so she could keep some sense of mobility. They'd had plans of moving an actual bed down from upstairs but by the next day it was pretty much a moot point.

She degenerated faster than expected, alternating between unconsciousness and a waking stupor caused by the medication. Charles had stayed by her side the whole time, still and quiet as most of the furniture, at least physically. He watched as business partners and supposed friends stopped by for the appropriate amount of time, the room quickly becoming crowded with bouquets of flowers of every different type and combination. The people would only occasionally notice him, wish their condolences as if she were already dead, apologize for the loss of his mother. He wanted to tell them he never really _had_ her in the first place but he didn't want to expend the energy. All the while, he kept in steady contact with her mind, pulling her dreams away from the panicked terror and into something better. Something brighter.

Now the bed was empty.

Charles leaned his head tiredly against the cool glass of the window, feeling exhausted in a deeper way than he could ever remember being before. It was a dangerous combination of lack of sleep and overexerting his abilities. It made him feel _ancient_ and not close at all to his sixteen years. It was only through sheer will at this point that he kept his eyes open, not wanting to deal with the inevitable dreams yet. He just wanted a moment of quiet. So he stared out the window sightlessly. He tried not to see the cars lining up outside, black suited adults gathering to discuss things to dire to consider including him on. He tried not to hear their voices down the hall. Tried to keep his powers trapped as close to him so he couldn't catch any of their thoughts. Most of all he was just trying not to think for _once_ in his life.

Perhaps, if only in the slightest, he was succeeding. At the very least he'd managed to turn off whatever early warning system that constantly reported new people nearby, as the light press of a hand on his arm caught him completely off his guard. He jumped at it, snapping over to meet whoever had intruded with wild blue eyes, only to find himself looking at his sister.

"Charles," Raven breathed, the shock at his reaction making her only grip onto his arm tighter, her small hand twisting into his sleeve like she expected him to disappear in front of her.

He let out a breath he hadn't been aware he was holding, the tense set of his shoulders fading back into their earlier slump, "I'm fine." He said it on reflex, knowing that was going to be the next question without even the slightest help from his telepathy. That had been the question everyone had been asking him all day, after all.

Raven frowned deeply and crawled up onto the bench seat completely without permission, winding her way gracefully between his arms to pull him into a tight hug. It was the best thing about Raven, her absolute impropriety for the customs he and his parents before him had been raised with. The quiet buffer of politeness, the careful observation of personal space. Raven ignored it knowingly and completely and he absolutely loved her for it.

His arms felt like dead weights but he used them anyway, looping them around Raven's shoulders with a certain desperation he couldn't and wouldn't verbalize. He tucked his face against her hair and pinned his eyes shut. "I'm fine," He whispered it again, hoping she'd believe it this time.

"Liar." Was her sniffled response, arms tightening. They stayed like that for some time, adjusting so they could both half watch the number of cars in the drive, somber looking adults navigating here and there. Occasionally one of the adults would sense them there, catching their gazes briefly before quickly finding some excuse to look away.

"How long have you been here?" Raven asked quietly, trying to pull away from the topic of what those adults were discussing.

"I never left."

Raven tensed, disbelieving. Raven had only come by once or twice, feeling like an intruder. She always felt like that when it came to Charles's distant relationship with his mother. She didn't want to know the woman, not because she didn't like her... though that was something close to her opinion, but because she didn't want to take up any of the small amount of time and attention the woman had to spare for her son.

So, all this time, she'd stayed away from them, even though she became increasingly worried. She knew what Charles was doing, she might even have asked him not to, if she thought he'd actually listen to her.

Raven reached out and clasped Charles's hand between her own, "What did you make her see?"

A short laugh escaped him, an artifact of his usual personality instead of an indicator of humor. "You could tell?"

She leaned back for only as long as it took to give him a strict glare that clearly said 'duh'. "What was it?"

Charles sighed deeply and pulled her back into a hug, more for his comfort than her own, "I showed her what could have been, if my father hadn't died. If I wasn't..." He let it trail off. Raven pinned her lips together, eyes flashing to their native yellow for only a moment. She wanted to ask, yet she didn't. Was it that he wasn't a telepath or that he wasn't part of his mother's life in the first place or perhaps something else. Selfishly, she didn't want to know.

Another car pulled up the driveway, taking its place along the line dull colored cars. Curious, she kept a close eye on this one, waiting to see what new lawyer or business man was arriving with the impression that he had some authority over their fate.

Probably one of Marko's lawyers, she guessed. He'd been throwing a fit since he'd gotten a look at the will. Evidently Sharon hadn't been as oblivious of his lack of business sense and had instead left pretty much everything to Charles. An action that would have seemed endearing if you didn't know it was a purely logical decision. Marko was getting more and more paranoid as the days went by and was spending money like water. Sharon had worked hard to keep her life up to her standards and she couldn't stand the thought of someone wrecking it after her death.

When the man stepped out, she nearly threw herself against the window to make sure she wasn't seeing things.

"What in the hell is he doing here?" She hissed, flattening a hand on the glass.

Charles didn't even bother chiding her on her language, another indication of his mood, instead he traced her line of vision. He was too late, the man having already reached the front steps, hidden by one of the walls. "Who was it?"

"It was that stupid doctor," Raven said grumpily, "Brexton."

He couldn't keep the look of worry off of his face, confusion and alarm shooting through him in an instant. It seemed to flow right on through to Raven, she sat up quickly in response, not used to seeing fear from him. All she'd known about the man was that he had randomly dropped Charles's case on bad terms and that seemed like a good enough reason to dislike him. Now she felt like her brother had left out some very important part of the story and she needed to know it now.

Charles had the good sense to look guilty, "He knows about me."

Raven stilled, "You mean..."

"Yes, but only me." He took advantage of her shock and disentangled himself from her, stepping a few paces away and reaching out to get a better grasp on what was going on, even as the effort pulled on his already tired senses.

There were times the past year where he'd woken up, worried that the man couldn't keep a secret, that he'd told the wrong person. Even worse, that the psychologist would come back himself and attempt to haul Charles in for testing. He knew fear of his mother's retribution would stop him at the very least... but she was gone now. What if he was taking advantage of that? What other reason would he be here for?

The same thoughts seem to echo in Raven's eyes from where she sat, frozen next to the window.

The hum of the minds on the other side of the wall were a sharp, tangled mess of ideas and motives. In between his exhaustion, grief, and fear... well, his calm was hard to hold onto. It took him far longer than usual to weed through to find the mind he wanted, and when he did, he almost didn't notice it.

He dropped his hand from his temple clumsily, staring at the space in the wall as if he could still see the room beyond. Then, quick as anything, he turned on heel and grabbed Raven's arm, pulling her as quickly as he could toward the door.

"Remember what I taught you?" He said hastily, pulling the door open an inch to check if there was anyone outside, "About blocking out a telepath?"

Raven tensed but kept her wits, nodding.

"Do it," he ordered, "Go out through the back and hide. Don't let anyone see or hear you when you go. I'll come and find you when it's safe but do _not_ trust anyone else, even if you recognize them. You understand?"

"Yes," her voice trembled, eyes watering, "Charles, I..."

Even though he wasn't supposed to, even though he wasn't trying to, he heard her thoughts as clear as day. The unwillingness to leave, yet the fear of what would happen if she did. How she felt useless. How she couldn't bear to lose him.

"I know, Raven, I do." Charles said soothingly, dropping a quick kiss on her forehead before urging her down the hallway to the deeper parts of the mansion. He watched her go, working every bit of strength he had into his calm, concentrating on breathing in and out until she disappeared. Only then did he step back into the room with its empty bed and menagerie of flowers, walking slowly backwards without taking his eyes off the door, stopping just short of the windows.

Soon those doors would open and when it did, Charles could imagine what they'd see almost exactly. He knew he unnerved people, he knew how he seemed almost omniscient, a force to be reckoned with. He fought that perception every day, pushing his personality, his morals to the forefront of everything he did, all to keep that fear away.

Today however, he had to embrace it. He needed to be that unstoppable force, that terrifying child who knew too much, because that perception was all he had to protect him right then. He was bone tired, mentally spent, lacking most of his usual control. All he had to work with at that moment was a bluff... and he was going to use it for all it was worth.

"I believe he's in-" One of the lawyers opened the door with a sweeping gesture, pausing mid step as he caught sight of Charles waiting for them. The two forms behind him didn't falter quite so easily, but the acknowledgment was still there. The lawyer backed off a few steps, leaving the door hanging partway open, he refused to meet Charles's gaze again, "I uh... I have to go do something so... Yes. there you go." He walked off a little faster than was strictly necessary.

The two men stepped inside, the first the unmistakable form of the old psychologist, the other was easy to recognize as well. Tan skin and salt and pepper hair. Charles didn't bother looking at Richard, he looked instead at the other man.

"Shadow King." He addressed the man, somehow making it both sound formal and somehow a mockery.

The older telepath's mouth twitched up into a smile, "Charlie."

"It's Charles." The teenager corrected solidly, "You're not welcome here."

"I assumed as much," The King laughed, stepping in front of the psychologist who had a decidedly glassy look to his eyes, like he wasn't really there, "considering how hard it was to find. I tried looking for you, of course, but then it occurred to me to look for your little puppet here. It was nice of him to leave his name on the guest registry at the school. Made my life so much easier."

Charles managed to keep the flinch inward, hidden safely behind the walls around his mind. He marshaled his voice into some neutrality, "I don't keep puppets."

"Don't lie," The other telepath chided, "Telepaths are manipulators by nature. You may have not been controlling him but you _were_ using him. Reading him without permission. Making a fool of him and his profession as you did. Putting him in danger. You were so terrible to him, and to think he was actually starting to feel guilty for abandoning you after all that, you are devious."

The mental strike was well placed, hitting his senses just as a wave of guilt assailed him from within. Somehow he kept his guard up, but the exertion made him drop to his knees, palms catching him from a full fall. It had merely been a test of his defenses, meant to feel him out. Charles could feel the King's amusement that it had effected him that much.

"Been overexerting ourselves, have we?" The man laughed, "You shouldn't do that to yourself Charlie, it makes you vulnerable."

Charles pushed himself back up with shaking muscles, not because of weakness but because his mind was simply having trouble communicating what he wanted his limbs to do. The Shadow King was no idiot. He'd known today was the day to do this, he'd known Charles would be weak. Whether it was spying on him from other people's minds or just interpreting what he already knew, it didn't matter. The older telepath had the advantage of timing, experience, and ruthlessness. Charles could not let this continue on if he hoped to have any chance.

Weakly, he peered over at the man through his lashes, trying to hide the motion somewhat. He was standing far back, farther than he could hope to reach even with the advantage of surprise, which he really didn't have. If he was going to have any hope of breaking past his defenses he was going to probably require skin contact, and with him staying back that far...

Richard on the other hand, was advancing on him, eyes dead as a marionette's. It gave him an idea.

"This is all very much a pity," The Shadow King rambled, "I think I'm going to miss chasing you when you're gone."

The psychologist's shoes came into Charles's field of vision ominously and Charles curled his fingers against the carpet.

"Do you know I found him at his granddaughter's birthday party? Cutest girl in the world. Shame she'll only remember her own birthday as the day her grandfather disappeared..."

The next mental attack was meant to keep him down and it did a good job, any more effort and he wasn't sure he could have kept the older telepath out of his mind. Richard was reached down for him while he was still dazed and Charles was oddly glad for it. He needed this to look real, he needed it to be a surprise. The psychologist hauled him up by his collar, the cloth cutting snugly into this throat. He ignored it and waited, watching for the Shadow King to become absorbed in the next goading comment. Then, quick as he could, Charles shot his hands out and clamped them around Richard's head, thumbs on the older man's temples. Breaking into his mind was easy after that, so much that he had to pull back, worried about permanently damaging the man, if he wasn't already.

He skirted around the majority of the man's memories and consciousness, it wasn't what he was after anyway. He needed a way to get at the man controlling him and, while this was complicated, it should work. Like Ariadne's thread in the labyrinth, as soon as he found it, it was a simple matter of following it back to its creator.

It forced him to dig deep in himself, to drain whatever reserve of power he held within him and then after that, to tap into the raw, unpracticed sources within him. The kind of source he'd always been too scared to test out because it would very literally require testing it on unwilling human minds. Much like how blood turned darker the closer it got to the heart, this power did as well. This was the power that could end free will, this could inspire insanity in a breath, and this was what could end a life without even trying... but he didn't have a choice.

He'd never practiced these abilities but he'd always had a certain talent with telepathy. This was no different. Charles submerged himself in the instinct and wrapped himself in it, hitting the older telepath's mental barriers and tearing them with surprising ease. He didn't stop, not even to acknowledge the man's surprise. He kept following the red thread all the way back to the source, the dark consciousness that was The Shadow King and he _dug in._

In that spare second of contact, of domination over this man's mind, it was like standing on a mountaintop. Charles could see _everything._

He saw the Shadow King, no, Amahl Farouk, for who he was. He could see every person he'd used, abused, held hostage, killed. He saw every time he erased free will from a person's mind and reduced them to nothing but automatons. Not just humans, mutants too. He had been collecting them for his own gain, to do whatever struck his fancy on a day to day basis. He didn't have a master plan, he didn't have a purpose. This man had inspired thoughts of war and treason in the minds of dictators and tyrants because it _amused him._ He didn't want to make the world a place for mutants, he just _wanted_. Wanted everything in the world for his own, he thought he was born to it, that it was owed to him.

He saw and understood that in an instant and through the power of that base rage, the raw instinct, he found every single thread that spread out from Farouk to his own body. He identified the thread that allowed him to blink, sleep, breathe. The thread that allowed his mind to tell his heart to beat...

...and then Charles severed them all.

In that empty whiteness that followed, he felt himself falling back into the internal world of dreams the mind could make. He was drained, useless, with barely the capacity to make his eyes open but something made him do it anyway.

Richard Brexton sat across from him in the middle of nothingness, sitting in a chair that belonged to the reading room in the mansion. Charles stared up at him blearily, awareness nearly beyond him. Richard didn't seem bothered, he just smiled.

"Thank you, Charles..." The apparition said in an echoed voice, "and... I am sorry."

In the next moment he was awake, eyes wide open but completely unseeing. His mind was a tangle of foreign ideas, memories, and emotions. In that moment he had no idea if he was Richard Brexton, Amahl Farouk, or Charles Xavier and yet he felt like he was all three. Then someone gave him his answer.

"Charles!" Raven appeared over him, a cool hand stroking his forehead, her eyes worried and vividly yellow. "Charles, please!"

Yes, that sounded right. That's who he was. He blinked, pulling his own mind from the wreckage, moving his hand to clasp onto Raven's arm, looking for some kind of anchor.

"Oh thank god, I thought..." Raven sniffled and shook her head, not wanting to continue that line of thought. She dropped her head onto his chest in relief.

He didn't answer, he didn't quite trust himself to be able to put together words at that moment, especially since he'd only just gathered enough awareness to realize he was in the mansion, lying on the floor of that claustrophobically empty room. Ever so carefully, he turned his head to notice he wasn't he only one. Two other forms littered the carpet, each profoundly still. With guilt like a knife in his gut, all of a sudden he _knew_.

He had just murdered two people.


	8. Monsters

For an equally intoxicating and terrifying moment (hours? days?) the world was a kaleidoscope. A rush of colors, lights, and shapes that may have once been recognizable objects but were now so broken that their origin was completely indiscernible. It would have been beautiful if the feelings had not of accompanied them, all as disjointed as the technicolor sights were. Some were happy, giddy really, a child with a new toy, a woman looking across a bar and falling instantaneously in love. Then the pain, the hate, the absolute darkest depths of the human soul. A lot were somewhere in between, uncertain. They all shot through in the beat of a hummingbird's wings.

Then, out of the colorful abyss, he felt a sharp pull, the colors and emotions scattering. Only after that did the world seem to reluctantly resolidify, and Erik remember who he was. He opened his eyes, not aware they were even closed until he moved to take the action. He expected to find himself back in his bedroom, but that wasn't right either.

He was still in that room, back in years past. Numbly, his limbs still feeling foreign to him, he looked from the empty hospital bed with its entourage of flowers to the bustle of people in the room. Uniformed individuals darted in and out, corralling the lawyers and businessmen at the door, trying to protect the view of the two crumpled human shapes tastefully covered in white sheets.

Feeling very much like a ghost, Erik silently walked through the scene. The people in the room ignored him, he didn't expect anything less. While this was nothing like before, this _had_ to be a memory. Before he had been a passive pair of eyes, paralyzed in the moment. Now he knew he had no more effect, but the freedom of movement had some perks. Erik loomed over the farthest body, the shape under the sheet vague but recognizable, salt and pepper hair poking meekly out of the top.

It was from the deepest, blackest part of his heart that Erik hated this man. A place he'd only thought Shaw had fully occupied before. He rolled his hands into shaking fists.

Memory or not, the man was infinitely lucky he was dead already.

A sharp intake of breath that was most certainly not his own drew Erik's attention to a new figure standing in the middle of the room.

"Charles," Erik said unthinking, eying the 16 year old version of his friend. To his surprise, the young telepath looked up, straight at him. The amount of guilt trapped in those eyes was literally painful, digging into him and gluing his feet to the floor, yet Erik couldn't look away.

He was saved as a detective passed between them, stepping up to another policeman. They both ignored Erik and Charles, as if they weren't there.

"Well good news and bad news," The detective scratched his nose idly with a notepad, "Bad news is the best explanation we have is either simultaneous stroke or some sort of gas leak."

The policeman nodded and gestured the room's open windows, "Heard that much. What's the good news?"

"Turns out the kid's alright, though I don't really believe 'em." He chuckled airily.

Erik circled the men, expression dark as they continued to talk about the whole event as if it were some piece of amusing gossip. Charles remained where he'd appeared, staring up at the detectives with rapt attention, and Erik stepped just behind him.

"Kind of a creepy thing, wasn't he?" The detective continued.

The officer shifted uneasily on the spot, "His mom just died, what do you expect?"

"It's not that," The detective waved the explanation away, "It was the eyes, man. I tried to ask him a few questions before he left and he just _stared_ at me, you know? Not a word, just that creepy look. You heard the rumors right? That the kid is crazy?"

The officer looked like he wanted to punch the detective but tamped down on the instinct, if barely. Erik found he liked this officer. "I heard the stepfather got cheated out of a large fortune today, he was pretty angry about it too. He stormed off a little before this all happened and only just came back. Might be worth looking into." The officer supplied.

The detective looked at him sideways, as if noticing for the first time that the man opposite him was a sentient being with a brain. Then he laughed, sounding amazed, "Sharp ears," He clapped the officer on the shoulder in congratulations, "Oh, what about that girl, though? The sister. Where'd she go off to?"

The officer looked down at the hand on his shoulder for a moment too long, making it keenly obvious that it was unwelcome. It was then that Erik noticed the officer's eyes shine gold for a moment before returning to their normal brown. The officer smiled sarcastically.

"Oh she's around her somewhere. I'll go get her." He didn't wait for permission before stomping off, the skin of his neck taking on a tinge of blue.

"She shouldn't have done that," Charles said quietly, a quiet hysteria threaded through the words.

Erik snorted, he would have encouraged this memory version of Raven to go even further if he thought it would have any impact. As it was, he was proud she made the effort. He wanted to communicate this to Charles but, with that slightly hysterical edge, he didn't think it would be wise. Instead, he put a hand on his shoulder, turning Charles to face him, voice intense and assured.

"She was trying to protect you, Charles."

The 16 year old version shook his head, fingers crawling up his own neck to lace together at the nape, looking very much like he was attempting to hold himself together. "Marko didn't do this, I did. Why would she- I don't... I did this. _I_ did this."

A fire wound its way around Erik's spine, spurring him on to grip Charles's shoulder tighter, "You did what you had to in order to survive." His voice came out more a growl than he intended, but it was a compromise to shaking the sense into him.

Charles's eyes flicked up to him again, suddenly angry, "I _murdered_ them."

"They gave you no choice." Erik returned with the same intensity.

A laugh bubbled out of the teenager, shaking his head in disbelief, "Your world is so small." He looked in awe, the hysteria now something fully formed and sharp in everything he did and said, "No choice? I had _every_ choice. My abilities are meant to twist, to change. I could have rewritten his very personality so that the very thought of using his mutation makes him physically ill. I could have wiped every memory clean and seen exactly how important nature is to nurture in a sociopath like him. That's where my true power is... that's what I could be doing and what do I chose to use them for? Talking with people in a different room? Useless. I killed him because it was _easy_."

The hysteria quickly became aggression, anger, oppressive in its intensity. Erik met the challenge. Anger was his specialty.

"And now the world is better for it."

"'For the greater good.' 'To protect yourself and Raven.' 'To prevent any future atrocities.' Excuses. Every last one." Charles spat the word, the feral tone of his voice not letting up. He leaned forward slowly, and somewhere between the motion and the soulless look in his eyes, Erik became aware that he should probably be terrified of Charles.

"What of Brexton, then?" Charles pushed, "His daughter never believed that this was an accident. She goes to sleep every night with hatred on her mind, hoping that at least in her dreams she might find the man who killed her father and make him pay."

In a blink, it must have been a blink because he didn't see it actually happen, the sixteen year old Charles was no more, replaced by the adult version Erik had assumed he knew. It wasn't quite right though, the dead look, the aggression, it was still there in every line and it was wholly unnatural.

"Had she your abilities, had I not been the coward and let her live in ignorance, she would hunt me down in a heartbeat." A dark smile crept onto Charles's face. "I am her Shaw. I murdered her father because I was afraid. Because I couldn't stand the idea that this other telepath could live in the same world I did for one _second_ longer. Any other reason is simply an excuse."

Charles pried Erik's hand off his shoulder like it was the easiest thing in the world, stepping back to put some distance between them.

"Fear makes monsters of all men, Erik. Neither of us are immune." Charles said the words with a twisted sense of affection for them, smile sharpening. To that, Erik found himself completely silent, and the monster that was wearing Charles's face seemed pleased at that. He stepped back, chin tilted imperiously before he raised a hand, the memory fading to nothing but an empty white room.

"Now, get out of my head."

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Raven has already dashed past him before Erik could fully open the door to Charles's room, somehow landing a careless (or more likely purposeful) elbow into his stomach as she did. Despite years worth of instincts, he held the agitated breath and slowly let it go, closing the door quietly behind him.

In the meantime Raven had scrambled inelegantly across the bed to settle next to her brother, her very, very non-responsive brother. Slowing down her earlier rush, she gently brushed a hand across Charles's forehead, the motion eliciting nothing more than reflexive blink of his already halfway closed eyes. She traced her hand in the same path again, hoping for something more, but he even failed to blink this time.

Erik watched the soft square of her shoulders warily, hand still on the doorknob. He couldn't say he was surprised at all when Raven's gaze turned to him, gold and accusing, and he didn't think it was entirely misplaced.

"What did you _do_?"

Of course that didn't stop him from bristling at it, "I did nothing. It was his fool idea."

Raven gave a sharp laugh that was completely devoid of humor before turning her back on him, setting herself to muttering things into Charles's ear. Erik's annoyance quickly faded as he watched, feeling infuriatingly useless and more than a little intrusive.

After Charles's little experiment in memory sharing, an experience that still clung stubbornly to the edges of his senses, Charles had seemingly just shoved Erik out. He woke up... Charles didn't.

Well, perhaps that wasn't the correct word either, as his eyes were open, if barely, and it had taken him a few tries, but Erik discovered he could get Charles up and walking if he pulled him along. Everything was working, so to speak, but no one was home. Charles just kept staring at everything with a level disinterest that reminded Erik vividly of Emma Frost.

He'd taken the time to pull Charles to his own room as Erik's door was still very clearly busted and the situation warranted a level of privacy higher than that. He felt he owed that much at least. The next step after that had been an obvious one. Get the resident expert on all things Charles.

Reluctantly, Erik parted ways with the door, looping around the room to the other side of the bed, ignoring the heated stare Raven was sending his way.

"I didn't trust him," Erik admitted, already frowning at his own words as they came out. That wasn't quite right. It felt like he trusted Charles, far more than he'd trusted anyone, but he supposed the statement was still true. "Or I resented him for knowing everything about me without returning the favor. Likely both. So he showed me..."

Raven's eyes took a sudden shift from accusing to a terrifying understanding, hand stilling in her brother's hair, "What?"

Erik's expression was carefully placid, but that constant intensity hidden behind it all was incredibly apparent at that moment. "The day he killed them." He backed the words with confidence, making sure that she couldn't find any manner of accusation in his words. If anything he was more sure now that Charles had done the right thing than ever, had he not finished the job, Erik would have gladly done it for him.

"Oh god..." Raven whispered, leaning her head against Charles's, "I had a feeling. He was like this back then too, to the point I had to impersonate him a couple times just to keep them from sending him off to some stupid institution." She laughed wetly, managing to hide a sniffle in the action.

"He came back out of it then," Erik pressed, a dangerous coil of hope in his chest. "You must know how he did it."

Raven was already shaking her head, "I don't, really, I just... I just talked to him and he eventually woke up." She sighed heavily her eyes casting up into memories she obviously had intended to leave behind, "He said it's like a safety measure, like a mental panic room. Nothing gets in or out without his permission. Whenever he wakes up is his choice."

Erik closed his eyes, the last images of that white room flashing up easily. Charles had essentially built himself a padded cell in his own head, fully anticipating having to put himself somewhere were he couldn't hurt himself or others. The thought made Erik's stomach turn. He lurched forward, closing the distance between himself and the siblings in a heartbeat.

"Can he hear me?"

Raven stared up at him in confusion, "I... think so, but I don't-"

Erik didn't bother listening to the rest, looming over the catatonic telepath, "Charles, for _once_ in your life you are going to listen to me. You are a childish, arrogant, insufferable optimist, and a _complete_ idiot..."

Raven's mouth dropped open. Erik only gave her a quick, warning glance that kept her firmly in her spot instead of attempting to claw his face off.

"...but the last word in any language you could be described as is 'monster.' Yes you have an ability that I could take years failing to comprehend, that some fools may even be frightened by, but, I'm sure you'll agree with me when you stop being so dramatic, that does not speak in any way to your morality. Make no mistake. The sheer amount of flaws you have make my life infinitely more difficult, never in my life have I seen so much bureaucracy since the day I met you."

The aghast look on Raven's face had melted into a shocked understanding, a disbelieving laugh escaping her lips.

"You have no concept of privacy." Erik continued, as if he was simply listing things they needed to find at the store.

"Total know-it-all, too." Raven tossed in with an exaggerated eye roll, leaning into Charles affectionately as she said it.

The slightest hint of amusement hid behind Erik's eyes, "Persistently meddling in business you should just keep out of."

" _Terrible_ pick up lines."

"Complete show off."

"Oh... and he gets really moody if he doesn't get to reveal all those 'amazing' things he knows in really dramatic ways." Raven smirked, full on digging out her air quotes for the word, "Did he do that to you?"

"Constantly." Erik looked martyred.

"Try living with him for 18 years," Raven sighed, "it gets _really_ annoying."

"I think I have a general idea." The light in Erik's eyes had expanded to a smirk, it turned into something more thoughtful when he looked back to his still entirely unresponsive friend, "I'll take care of the children tomorrow. Stay here and angst if you want to. Just know that when you inevitably go into my head again without my permission, you will find that I am not afraid of you in the slightest. I never will be."

With a casual shrug, completely ignoring the scandalized look Raven had given at being called a child, Erik moved to the door.

"Asshole." Raven called after him sharply.

Erik flashed a row of sharp teeth at her in return, "You're welcome."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was only through a considerable amount of will and an obscene amount of busywork that Erik managed to keep himself from lurking outside Charles's door the next morning. That in itself should be alarming enough to him, what made it truly disgusting wasn't the fact that Erik realized how he felt so mind numbingly off balance without the telepath, but that he _didn't care it was disgusting in the first place._

Almost two decades he had gone without getting attached to someone for numerous and very logical reasons, and now, after barely half a year spent with the man and he was reduced to feeling like a lost puppy without him. It was ridiculous and it didn't bother him _one bit_. Things were obviously wrong with the world.

Raven came down in the morning, pawing through the leftovers from the night before and looking like she hadn't slept a wink. Erik didn't exactly mob her for news, but he did stare at her rather intensely, which was pretty much the same thing in his case. Predictably, she didn't have anything to offer him more than he already knew and she disappeared right back up to Charles's room soon after. Erik forced himself to sit in the kitchen until the urge to follow up right after her had passed.

It would be a useless venture, unless he somehow sprouted telepathy in the last few minutes without knowing it, and he knew that intellectually. The only person who could help Charles was Charles, and the best Erik could offer was to keep things working while he was off dealing with his own personal martyrdom. Didn't make him feel any less useless, of course.

Unfortunately for a certain group of teenage mutants, Erik discovered they were an extremely good method of distraction. He managed to even forget the whole affair until around midday, when the utter exhaustion in Sean Cassidy's eyes turned abruptly into hope.

"Oh thank God, we're saved!" Sean dropped into the grass after his last pushup and clapped his hands together in an ostentatious praying motion. It took a moment for Erik to realize the boy hadn't just finally cracked (something he'd been anticipating since he met the boy) and by then Hank and Alex were looking pointedly over his shoulder up at the veranda.

"What on earth are you doing to them, Erik?" An amused and immediately recognizable English accent echoed from above them. Erik didn't even bother hiding his self satisfied smirk as he looked over his shoulder. Charles was leaning over the veranda's railing, looking for all purposes like someone who had just rolled out of a nap instead of a self imposed coma. He wasn't nearly as put together as he usually chose to be, hair a little more unruly, sharpest piece of clothing being a button up shirt without any suit jacket or over the top sweater in sight... but he seemed well enough. Erik hadn't even been aware of his own well hidden sigh of relief until he noticed the knowing quirk Charles's smile had taken.

"Sean was being a smartass." Alex supplied with a vindictive grin.

Charles raised his eyebrows and laced his fingers together, "Is that so?"

Sean rolled over, tossing a clump of dirt in Alex's direction in answer, and missed by a mile.

Hank's shy grin made an appearance, "To quote, 'What are you going to make me do, Bad Cop? Push ups?'"

Erik raised an eyebrow at Charles and crossed his arms, "Any complaints with my methods?"

Charles showed an exaggerated wince, "I'm sorry, Sean, I believe you brought this on yourself."

Sean only made a joking call that sounded weakly like 'Traitor!' before Alex offered a hand to pull him up off the ground. It only took a minor amount of traded insults and veiled half threats to get the boys back inside. They weren't in any shape to argue a break after the day Erik had run them through and fled at the first opportunity.

Charles waited at the railing patiently, not giving any part of his intentions away until Erik got closer. At least that was his assumption. Even when Erik finally settled down, leaning on the railing next to him, Charles made no move to speak. He kept his eyes firmly trained on the satellite dish in the distance, fingers woven together against his mouth.

"Forgive me," Charles said finally, still obviously hesitant, "I am not accustomed to failure, let alone talking about it. When people realize my control is less than immaculate, they get... nervous."

Erik's short laugh somehow communicated disinterest and disapproval at the same time, "You worry too much of what others think."

Charles smiled into his hand, "Erik, my entire _world_ is what other people think."

"Then you should be used to ignoring it by now." He responded shortly as if this should be obvious. Charles's smile never faded, if anything the comment made it brighten somewhat. He laughed to himself, propping his chin up with a hand and let the conversation lapse into a much more comfortable silence.

Erik let him, reaching out with his senses to follow the kids through their trek through the house. He tuned in on Hank's glasses as he snuck quietly off to go spend more time in the lab. The other two boys, only trackable from the metal in their shoes, went off to the front room to undoubtedly harass Moira. He was glad to see they knew better than to eavesdrop, at least they'd learned something in their stay.

"It occurs to me," Charles chimed in again, eyes flickering as if following the ideas in his head, "that you are a far better mutant than I am."

"Is that so?" A moderately friendly smirk surfaced on his face at that, expression demanding Charles be more specific.

"Have you ever in your life felt any shame at what you are?" The telepath asked lowly, eyes bright as he waited for the answer.

Erik frowned, as if the question was ridiculous, "Never."

Charles laughed and gesturing to acknowledge the case in point. It was something that had taken him a while to identify in the metal manipulator only because he had to first recognize that it was not a sentiment they shared, at least wholly. Charles did, of course, think that every mutation he ran across was the next grooviest thing in the world. He didn't think they made any of them less or more as people. He even genuinely looked forward to what mutants could bring to the world... but there was always that rebellious pinprick of doubt in his own mind. That this was something to hide, to not burden the world with.

It was an idea that disappeared under the light of logic if he thought on it, but every time he thought he'd driven it away, it slipped right into the back of his mind like the mot insidious sort of weed. It had been since the first day he realized his mother was terrified of him and it wouldn't be gone for years to come... but it was getting less pervasive. He envied Erik for the lack of it.

"You realize you don't have to be perfect, Charles..."

Charles turned back to his friend, more shocked by the statement than he should be. Erik smiled at his reaction, for a minute seeming like he was the mind reader.

"You don't have to be, not around me."

Charles let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, hands seizing the bannister like it was his only link to earth. The words came out of Erik in a very familiar tone. The same tone he'd used back when they'd first met. _You are not alone._

"I have my question for the day," Charles turned to Erik as he said it, amused that he was keeping the same level of nonchalance he usually had. If anything, it seemed the older mutant was enjoying this whole thing.

"Is that so?" Charles responded.

Erik didn't miss the imitation but he intentionally ignored it, "I'm sure you know I've killed before, that I plan to kill again when we find Shaw... yet you've done nothing to stop me. Why?"

That sparked a small smile in the telepath. He tilted his head in consideration as his thoughts turned inward, "Hope. Potential." He answered after a moment, "Let me ask _you_ a question, Erik... Why didn't you kill that banker in France?"

Erik took in a breath to answer, as if it were an easy question only to realize he didn't have one. He'd never been concerned about the authorities, and they'd never have tracked the appointment back to him anyway, sot it wasn't out of any fear of being arrested. It wasn't that he thought killing the man would tip off Shaw prematurely either, leaving him alive left more of an opportunity for the man to warn them off. It wasn't because he'd found some redeeming factor in the man. He hadn't lied, he'd wanted to kill the banker... but he didn't.

Erik looked back over at the telepath with nothing to say, Charles merely shrugged in explanation and turned back to look at the satellite dish.

"Hey guys!" Moira leaned out of the window, drawing their attention, "The President is making his address."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long to post all these up here. Got massively distracted. As it is this is caught up to date with what is on FF.net. The next chapter should be out within the next week.


	9. One. Two. Three.

For all the skills, experiences, and world views that stood between them, Erik and Charles never had a difficult time understanding each other when it came to one topic: Strategy. It was natural since day one, an easy hand off between the two of them as each situation called for one realm of expertise or another and everything else was filled in with the comfortable logic of battle. An ease that was only strengthened by their nightly games of chess. 

 

So when it came time to lay down the battle plan for their altercation with Shaw, it was almost a relief, as it was the the only thing they _hadn't_ argued about that day. Taking down Shaw wasn't an easy task, to be sure, so they had to take away as many advantages as they possibly could. They'd have to take him out of his home playing field and shake his confidence, removing the sub from the ocean handled both of those quite nicely. 

 

After that, it would be up to the children to draw Shaw's support away and keep them busy as long as they could. A gross oversimplification, of course, the boys in themselves had worked on several supporting strategies, made themselves familiar with what to expect from one another, and Charles would be listening in and directing them to who needed help. 

 

Then, of course, it was Erik's job to go in and confront Shaw. What he was supposed to do when he got there was very specifically not talked about in their strategy session because they'd talked the topic to death already, and even if they did make a plan at that point, it would be entirely up to Erik's good graces if he followed them or not. As for Charles, he would stay behind. Neither of them had any illusions about his fighting skills and Shaw wouldn't have a hope of defending himself against Charles if he couldn't get to him. 

 

It was all a very smooth process, with little to no argument. That made it all the more alarming when Charles chose to dramatically alter it at the very last moment. 

 

"You're what?" Erik bit out in question, the children brushing past him on their way out of what remained of Hank's Blackbird, off to keep their respective parts of the plan in order. 

 

Charles reset his jaw in that way that showed he had no inclinations of changing his mind, "I am going with you." 

 

Mystique and Moira were standing near the unnatural opening of the plane, where the jagged edge of their half of the plane suddenly met open sand. The massive form of the beached submarine was a bent mess farther down, three mutants already standing defensively in front of it. 

 

Erik wordlessly shook his head for a moment, not quite decided if he should be worried or aggravated. Had this been the plan all along for Charles? To give Erik the illusion of freedom until the last second and rip the choice from his hands just as he reached it? Erik's fist clenched tightly on one of the remaining metal struts holding the Blackbird together, franticly searching his friend's face for some kind of deception. 

 

"If you think this will stop--" Erik said quietly, so low that Moira and Mystique probably only heard an indistinct growl. 

 

"This has nothing to do with that," Charles said calmly, not bothered by the inherent accusation. He gave the older mutant the moment to reign in the instinctive temper before he continued, taking a step closer so he could speak lowly, "Something isn't right, my friend." 

 

Erik let out a stern breath, refusing to feel foolish over the assumption, "How so?" 

 

Charles frowned, trying to figure out how to articulate what he had just felt, "I looked into the teleporter's mind and..." it was too clean, too easy to break into. It was filled with base thoughts about the day, some relevant information yes, but far more about what Azazel had eaten in the last week, the coordination of gathering menial supplies at the last two ports. For someone who had spent more than some time with a telepath, he expected some base defenses, at least. This felt far less like putting locks on a door and much more like leaving twenty dollars on the coffee table and hoping the thief took that instead of your expensive jewelry. 

 

Maybe for other telepaths this would have been enough, the effort of digging deeper too arduous, but for Charles it was a glaring red flag. He dove deeper, and the deeper he got, the more obvious the defenses were. Someone had taught these mutants and taught them well. Even Angel's mind spoke of years of training when she'd only been with Shaw for a matter of weeks. 

 

"His mind, and the others as well, they've been tampered with. There are gaps, very masterfully hidden ones no less, where information should be while other information is just... given over without the slightest struggle." 

 

"Frost?" Erik asked seriously, mind already working on the implications of the discovery. 

 

"No," Charles shook his head contemplatively, "Unfortunately, she wasn't anywhere near this talented." 

 

Erik's hand tightened around the bar reflexively, indenting the metal beneath his fingers as he watched Shaw get away in his minds eye. This opportunity lost yet again, seeming so real for a second that he nearly jumped as Charles latched a firm grip on his arm, drawing his attention back. 

 

"I'm going with you." Charles said in a way that told Erik a million other things. Shaw was still there. All was still not lost. He wasn't alone in this. 

 

Wordlessly, Erik nodded, drawing an immediate grin out of Charles, the telepath's grip on his arm tightening in encouragement before he stepped away towards the surreal stretch of the Cuban beach. 

 

"What?" Raven breathed out in disbelief, jumping in front of her brother at the last second, visibly torn between being the warrior woman she was grooming herself to be and the scared sister she instinctively still was. 

 

Charles just smiled and rested a soothing hand on her blue cheek, "Stay here. Use your training. Be our eyes and ears and keep the boys in order. Yes?" Charles was similarly split, his tone and words all militaristic, his actions only that of a brother who was infinitely proud of her but would still very much like to reach down and zip her uniform up to her neck. 

 

"Of course." She said confidently, mostly bravado. The bolstering brush of Erik's hand on her shoulder helped with that, as his unquestioning acceptance of her always did. He pushed past a second later, feet hitting the sand in a way only a man with a solitary lifelong motivation could. It left Charles, as usual, to hurriedly tie everything up before he rushed after him. 

 

Charles caught up with him after a few quick orders to Moira about their backup rendezvous point, a private airstrip a few miles from the beach where Charles had telepathically found a man who had no reservations about quietly taking exorbitant amounts of American money to fly them home. As soon as he fell into step next to Erik, everything else seemed to click as it always did. It was a particularly vivid sense of _rightness_. He'd felt it when they'd gone to recruit, when they'd broken into that Russian general's home like the most mismatched set of actions heroes ever conceived. From the rebel upturned corner of Erik's lips, it seemed Charles wasn't the only one who'd picked up on it. 

 

"To think you were trying to leave me behind." Charles said only loud enough for Erik to hear as they advanced on a rather dazed looking riptide. 

 

Erik only answered with a quick flash of teeth and a sharp hand motion, pulling a section of the ship to mercilessly pin the Spanish mutant to the sand. Adding the proverbial insult, Erik walked on top of it without a moment's hesitation, seeming a little too pleased as he looked back at Charles, openly challenging his pacifism in the face of battle. 

 

He didn't get a proper chance to gloat as Charles was already most of the way up into the ship when he started, but the point was made. Erik had no intentions of playing to Charles's sensitivities, and Charles was going to have to run with it... and run he did. 

 

Once Erik was inside the sub, any sign of Erik's fleeting amusement evaporated, his pace only slowed when he visibly reigned himself in to work over strategy in his head. Charles stayed tapped into it, half listening to the others, directing Shaun to the ship Alex had found himself stranded on. It was exhausting, to be truthful. Keeping a hold of Erik's mind in its current state was something like holding onto a ledge by his fingernails, and as they got farther into the ship, it seemed to be harder and harder to hear things outside, even in a telepathic sense. It would be fascinating if it wasn't so completely terrifying. 

 

"This is it." Charles said, eyes catching on where he knew the controls for the nuclear reactor were. Erik shut them off quickly, if only to have some kind of outlet for his frustrations. Charles looked over at him cautiously, the machinery around them sparking. 

 

"He has to be here." Charles said preemptively even as Erik responded only in waves of disbelief and barely tethered rage. Given what they knew about the tampering in the other mutants' minds, they'd chosen not to follow the floor plan Charles had pulled from their heads, at least not precisely. Every bit of information he had seen had been practically pointing arrows at the room beyond the door in front of them which rang a particularly clear sort of trap to the two of them. They'd searched everywhere else before they had no more options. They had to go through. It was the only place Shaw could be. 

 

Erik reached for the door jaggedly, limbs flooded with adrenaline, Charles kept back and to the side just in case. Erik twisted the hatch and pulled, the door swinging in heavily... 

 

Empty. 

 

"He's not here." Erik growled, stepping through. 

 

"What?" Charles stumbled in after him, careful of his footing on the uneven floor. He turned a circle in the room, disbelieving. "This can't be right, Erik, he _has_ to be here." 

 

Then, with the feeling quite like dropping through a patch of thin ice, the last door slid open behind Erik and there was Shaw. 

 

But he wasn't alone. 

 

Standing next to the man, his hand firmly wrapped around her wrist, was a girl, twelve years old at the very most. Dark skin, hair an amazingly stark white under the lights of the mirror room, and she was utterly terrified. 

 

"Erik!" Shaw called happily, looking pleased as punch, "So good to see you again. Oh, and you brought a friend!" 

 

The only answer Shaw got was Erik stepping resolutely in between him and Charles, expression so unreadable even Charles was having a hard time figuring it out. Shaw didn't seem the least bit bothered. 

 

"You must be Charles, then. I'd hoped I was going to meet you." Shaw said with a fatherly smile, He tilted his head down to look at the girl. Her eyes widened at the gesture, an obvious flinch shocking her features as he brushed away a white curl, "Come now, Ororo. Say hello. Ororo here is the newest addition to our team, very promising." 

 

Even as he should have had every warning in the world, the tense of Erik's shoulders, the utter lack of response, even the fact that Charles was still hanging on to Erik's nearly incoherent mind, when Erik moved abruptly into the mirror room Charles found himself wholly unprepared. 

 

He moved with a sort of beastly fluidity, mind white hot with anger so much it was physically painful to hold onto. Erik hand shot forward and pulled, tugging the girl quickly out of Shaw's grip by the snaps of her coveralls. Ororo stumbled out on fear addled legs, Erik sidestepped her and sent her out of the room even as he advanced in, the mirrors seeming to swallow him whole. 

 

"Erik!" Charles moved to do something, he wasn't sure, maybe pull him back. Erik cut off any further complaints by pushing Ororo right into Charles's legs, forcing his attention there instead. 

 

"Don't worry Charles," Shaw said as the heavy hidden door closed in front of him, "I'll speak with you next." 

 

As gentle as he could without traumatizing the girl further, Charles untangled Ororo from where she'd instinctively latched on to his uniform and lurched toward the door, resisting the urge to bang his fist on the outside. He concentrated everything he had on getting in, mentally and physically, one hand at his temple, the other skimming the wall for some hidden latch. It all proved fruitless. Whatever it was that had been tampering with his abilities was all concentrated in the room beyond, turning it into a terrifying void in the world that no effort could penetrate. 

 

...and Erik was in there with Shaw. The same Shaw who had just spent the last five minutes absorbing the equivalent amount of energy to a nuclear bomb. 

 

Charles pressed his forehead against the wall, driving away all the worst case scenarios that were crowding in from the edges of his subconscious. The wall wasn't soundproof, not entirely at least. The words were muffled, but what he did catch wasn't anything good. The distinct silence from Erik was bothering him more than anything. 

 

"Erik..." He whispered against the wall, not sure what he wanted to communicate, but wanting to do it nonetheless. 

 

"Who are you?" The girl squeaked after a moment, voice too shaky to really identify her accent. 

 

Charles let out a steadying sigh before he turned, fingers still on his temple as he tried to futilely find a way into that room. The girl looked up at him with large dark eyes, lip caught between her teeth. 

 

"Ororo, isn't it?" He asked breathlessly, compassion bleeding out of him for the girl. She nodded slightly, "My name is Charles, we're going to take you somewhere safe just as soon as my friend returns." 

 

She nodded again, taking another step towards where he was leaning against the door, fingers twisted in the purple denim of her overalls. For a moment, Charles considered sending her back out to find Moira and Raven, but he couldn't risk having her run across what he knew was an open battlefield. 

 

An ominous crunch jolted his attention back to the mirror room, fingers pressing back against his temple with renewed purpose. Instead of finding the gap of nothing in the world, Charles caught on to a wisp of Erik's incredibly distinctive mind. 

 

_"Erik!"_ Charles said directly into his mind, not wanting to tip Shaw off, _"Whatever you're doing, keep doing it."_

 

The affirmative he received in return was indistinct but still there and it drew a near hysterical smile to Charles's lips. Any progress was good in this situation. 

 

"Ororo," An idea occurred to him and he turned to the girl, "Did you know how to open this room? Did you see how he did it?" 

 

"Why?" 

 

That was right about when it occurred to Charles that something was off with this girl. All of her earlier mannerisms had abruptly dropped, leaving her standing there calm and collected, if confused at his question. Separating a sliver of his telepathy he'd been dedicating to the room beyond, he reached out to her. 

 

"Who _are_ you?" Charles asked harshly. 

 

The barest touch of her mind had told him many things. She _was_ Ororo. She was that scared girl, however she wasn't alone in her own mind. The presence that had been hiding in the deepest parts, waiting, now felt no problem with revealing itself. A telepath. _The_ telepath. The one who should be very, very dead. 

 

"Come on," The Shadow King chided in Ororo's voice, "You can't say you don't recognize me. You can never forget what another telepath feels like." 

 

Charles stayed resolutely silent, pushing away the questions that came to his mind first. How? _Why_? It wouldn't matter, it would only waste time. 

 

"I am not a child anymore," He stated calmly, "I am far more adept than I was then." 

 

"I don't doubt that. I know you're better than I am. I have known it for a long time. It's why I always pick our battles so carefully." Not-Ororo smiled, "Like I know in a moment, you're going to be very much otherwise occupied." 

 

As if on cue, the sound of beams crashing through the mirror room's ceilings sounded smashing the void to bits with it. Charles saw the situation clearly through Erik's eyes, saw Shaw advance. He reached out to tell Erik-- 

 

Ororo's hand clamped down on his, dark eyes curiously soulless as she stared up at him, "I don't need this girl intact to speak with you, Charles. If you warn him in any way, I will turn Ororo's psyche _inside out._ " 

 

Charles wasn't a person beyond hate, not by any terms, it was usually just so much harder to hate a person if you understood the way their mind worked... and he did, for the majority of the population. The Shadow King, on the other hand.... he had no concept. 

 

"What. Do. You. Want?" Charles glared past the girl's eyes and into the presence within her. 

 

Ororo smiled wider, the expression not fitting on her face, "I want you to do exactly what you were here to do..." 

 

Both of the telepaths looked up as Erik's real plan came to the surface from where it was so carefully hidden under the shards of past traumas, he reached out silently with his powers and yanked Shaw's helmet from his head. 

 

"Now Charles!" He got the message both through the muffled call through the door and the connection he'd kept with Erik's mind. It was a split second decision on too little information, even with the Shadow King looking all too pleased, Charles reached out and dug into Shaw's . 

 

"Good boy, Charlie." Ororo whispered. 

 

"Silence." Charles growled, fighting to keep control of Shaw's mind even as his presence in it made him feel absolutely ill. Shaw was no amateur when it came to telepaths and the sheer amount of years he'd lived didn't help either. He could make an armor of every terrifying, despicable thing he'd ever done, wrap it around the core of himself. It forced Charles to either push them away or tear through them entirely, either option left him feeling like he'd lived them himself, like he _was_ Shaw. 

 

He pushed through regardless, knowing he had little choice. He knew what Shaw would to do Erik now if he had the opportunity and he would _never_ let that happen. 

 

Shaw's mind fought him till the bitter end, until Charles found that central brightness and he dug in, halting all of his movements. In the next instance he was staring out of two sets of eyes. Erik and Ororo loomed in front of him, both with frighteningly similar looks of achievement on their faces. When Erik put on that helmet he was twisted between betrayal and relief. At least now the Shadow King would have no influence on him. 

 

"This is what we're going to do." Charles heard Erik through Shaw's ears as Ororo sat down beside him. He hadn't even realized his legs had given out. 

 

"One." 

 

She reached out, placing one of her small hands over his mouth without explanation. 

 

"Two." 

 

"This is going to hurt." She told him. 

 

"Three." 

 

She was right. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First and foremost I want to apologize for the wait. I had this chapter halfway written in a very different form when a friend and mentor of mine passed away and it just... Geh. I didn't want to work on anything for a long time. So I scrapped the chapter I did have and made this one. I like it much better anyway so that's great, but I very sorry about the lack of chapter.... oh and the cliffhanger.
> 
> I am a terrible person. :) Yes.
> 
> The gap between chapters this time will be much shorter. I promise!
> 
> Also, hopefully I got rid of the typos and junk but I was eager to get this out once I had it. So forgive me for anything you find. I will probably jump back in and correct it tonight or tomorrow.


	10. Reality

The world tilted into existence.

It wasn't an exaggeration of the terms at all. Consciousness came back in a discordant mess of vertigo and mulled sounds. Nothing seemed real, like if he reached out and touched them, he would just pass on through. Yet that couldn't be the case. Insubstantial things couldn't hurt him and... _he hurt._

He found his limbs first, the tingle of his fingers pulling along fabric, dragging up until they met his jaw, up to the sweat slick strands of his own hair. His fingers kneaded the skin of his skull, buried themselves until he found the epicenter of the pain. A palm pressed firmly against the meaty hollow at the back of his head, the other on his brow, holding like he was trying to stop some disastrous wound. Wasn't there, though?

He pulled his hand from his forehead by a few inches, expecting to see a slick of red dirtying the skin.

Nothing.

It was a hand of a scholar, pale, soft, with only the callous on his third finger where his pen rested as he wrote.

"Charles..."

He flexed his hand, eying the way the light passed through the many layers of semi-transparent skin cells, turning the edges pink, bones and veins showing dark.

"Charles?"

Curious. Hadn't he been wearing gloves?

"Charles!"

A pair of hands shook him sharply, the action snapping the titled world back into line. Charles twisted, hand grabbing the strong arm on his shoulder like a lifeline. He turned towards the blue light, so bright it haloed the person before him to near unrecognizability.

"Erik?"

The man sighed.

"No, Charles." The disappointment in his voice was hard to miss. The man shifted enough he blocked the light from behind him, revealing an old man, gray and stooped, though still infinitely recognizable. "It's Richard, Charles. Dr. Brexton. Remember?"

Charles could do nothing but stare, his hand on Brexton's arm slacking, calling his attention to his sleeve. A white sleeve, plain and loose, matching the white slacks made of slightly sturdier stuff. His feet were bare and, with the roll of an ankle, he discovered they were dirty on the bottom, like he probably hadn't bothered with shoes in a long while.

Richard watched the inspection with hooded eyes, frown deepening.

Charles only noticed he was being told to focus after the fourth of fifth time Brexton sounded out the word and snapped a finger loudly, making him jump. He'd been wrong. The tilt of the world wasn't gone, everything was fuzzed. He just hadn't noticed. _Why was it so hard to focus?_

"Christ, man, how much Thorazine did you give him?"

The man by the door (another detail that he had failed to pick up) looked at Brexton sternly, not appreciating the reproach. "If I had my way, we'd give him more. It's the only time he ever really comes out of it."

"Where am I?" Charles clamped his fingers down on Brexton's arm, voice feeling foreign to his own ears. Scratchy from disuse or overuse, he wasn't sure.

Richard patted his arm like a benevolent grandfather, "You're in a hospital, Charles."

"That isn't going to do you any good." The man by the door scoffed, obviously frustrated by Brexton's tactics. Charles followed the doctor's lead and stoutly ignored the man.

"I'm not injured." He stated instead, even as his head throbbed with so much pain it twisted into the joints of his toes like barbed wire.

Another of those sighs, "Not that sort of hospital, Charles."

A breathy hysterical laugh escaped him before he could stop it, "That's not possible." He looked around regardless, putting some distance between himself and Brexton until he hit a wall directly behind him. His hands slid across the tile floor, catching on the a piece of stiff fabric dangling. He looped a finger around it foggily and pulled, letting him see the structure of a cloth cuff sewn into strong straps hooked directly into the metal of a hospital bed. He let go of the cloth like it was on fire.

"I'm not- That's... No this isn't- _Dammit_ why is it so hard to think?" Charles cursed harshly, flattening his hands against his temples like it would clear away the fog that kept him from connecting thoughts like he should be able to. It had never been this hard to think, ever, and now he felt simple concepts melting through his fingers. "This. isn't. real."

"Told you." The man by the door said under his breath.

Brexton's voice was acidic, "He can hear you!"

"Oh like he'll care in another five minutes."

The doctor when back to his earlier strategy of ignoring the man and turned back to Charles who was pinned up against the wall trying to seem as dignified as possible despite the obvious shake in his shoulders.

"What do you remember, Charles?"

He slammed the heel of his hand against he linoleum in a move that would have been painful if it hadn't of paled so much against his headache, "I haven't forgotten _anything!_ "

Yet as he said it, his brain was failing him again. Raven. Oxford. Yes, that made sense. Then Moira. _Erik_. He hadn't realized he'd said that out loud until Richard's white eyebrows shot up.

"Erik, that's new..."

The other man shrugged, the keys on his belt jingling with the motion, "He started babbling about him after we let him have that chess set."

"You did what?" Brexton exclaimed, looking over in the corner of the room where a small magnetic chess set was sitting on the floor, game half played. "You idiots! His delusions are based entirely around chess! You're just reinforcing that."

"Hey!" The man barked, puffing his chest up, "Remember that you're here because we let you be here. You're not his doctor anymore."

The two shot insults back and forth like the dogs in neighboring yards they so resembled. It just made Charles twine his fingers further in his dark hair, finding it a little bit shorter than he usually kept it. He didn't care what they said. He couldn't. They didn't feel real. Nothing felt real. His arms shook nearly uncontrollably, like he was freezing, but he wasn't. The fog seemed to thicken driving out the breathable air.

The next thing he knew, he was looking up at Brexton. His expression was unreadable. He'd never been good at reading expressions anyway. Why was that? There had to be causation. True causation.

Then he realized that he couldn't _hear_ Brexton. He heard his words just fine. Soothing words about drug side effects and how he'd get through this. But where was the words _behind_ the words. The swirl of being he knew so well somehow.

Charles reached for it, to _hear_ and all he felt was sudden excruciating pain.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I killed you." Charles didn't wait for the world to until this time. He recognized the shape in the chair next to his bed. He recognized a lot of things quicker this time. That infernal fog was still there, but at least it seemed he hadn't stepped backward. Then again, if he had, would he truly know? Didn't matter. He had to remind Brexton of what he'd done, remind him that he needed to be gone before it somehow happened again.

Brexton looked up from the book he'd been reading, a leather bound thing with no labeling. "You didn't kill me."

The words seemed an odd choice for several reasons but the one Charles latched onto was the almost subconscious emphasis on _me_. The kind of emphasis a teacher puts on an answer that is halfway right, hoping her pupil will correct themselves. Charles shuddered at the thought and pushed it away, moving to sit up only to find one of his hands firmly trapped in a cuff, just tight enough he could move, but not leave the bed.

The fog in his mind suggested he take it as a given and he calmed down before he'd even had a chance to get worked up. He curled up around the trapped arm, head on his snow white pillow, and looked out at Brexton. The man near the door was gone, but he had a feeling it was a battle hard won for the psychologist. He looked almost impossibly old at that moment and Charles couldn't help but give him a look of utter pity.

Richard didn't seem bothered by it, instead he spoke, "You have questions. I can tell."

"Oh? Are you psychic?" Charles asked in a moment of brilliance, knowing the question was immensely funny but the fog swept back in before he could figure out why. The twitch of a smile from the man across him seemed familiar, just a reluctant twist of wide lips, yet...

"They're bringing in another dose soon, I'm not sure how much time we'll get." Richard reminded him, "Focus. Here is your time to ask."

Focus. Focus.

Why am I here? No. That skated far to close to the emphasized 'me' from earlier. He grabbed the question and twisted it until it was less terrifying.

"Why are you here?" Charles asked in sleepy tones, like he wasn't in a mental hospital and was more just... waking from a nap.

Richard shifted in his seat, closing his finger around the book, "It was a courtesy. They are trying out a new combination of medication out on you to increase your lucid moments. As your previous doctor, I was called to consult."

Charles wasn't sure when his eyes had drifted closed but he opened them again regardless, "...and?"

There it was again, that reluctant smirk, "and I wanted to make sure you were treated well. I don't think I've ever quite forgiven your stepfather for placing you here."

There must have been some stretch of time lost, because when he looked back, Richard was patiently reading his book again, his place a good twenty pages ahead of where it had been. Charles looked up at the silver headboard, though calling it that was a bit grand. It was a simple metal arc with one support pole horizontal between it. It was flat enough to see his reflection in.

"I'm curious if it's a shock." Richard asked, apparently finding it to be his turn.

Charles barely hummed his acknowledgment, reaching out with his uncuffed hand to cover his own haggard looking reflection with pale fingers. At least they weren't shaking as badly today. (Was it still today or the day before or after?)

"They told me you only become truly lucid every season or so, and you see your reflection even less than that." Brexton pondered, "Is it a shock to see the jumps in time?"

Charles frowned at his hand, parting his fingers to see the reflection between them, shadowy and dark. He wondered if he would blink and wake up to find himself old, even more useless than he was now. The thought tired him.

"Does it matter?" He managed to mumble before he drifted off.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Is Raven allowed to visit?" Charles asks one day, he's convinced Richard to allow him the chess board, though the action seems to have put the psychologist on edge. Half the pieces are missing but it's alright. He makes up new rules and sets up the board accordingly.

"Charles," Brexton says in that worrying voice of his, "You know Raven never actually existed."

The younger man freezes, shoulders abruptly one sharp line cut over his torso.

"She is my _sister_." He assures the other man with an edge, the ferocity of the statement shocking even him.

Richard treads carefully, "Think of your mother, Charles. Is she the type to adopt?"

No. But Charles knows it had nothing to do with that.

He pushes the chessboard away roughly, the magnetic pieces wobble but still stubbornly stick to their spots on the metal board.

"Leave me alone."

Richard leaves.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He comes by some time later, the cup of pills Charles is getting used to in his hand. He's dressed more formally, a tie high up on his neck. He seems sad. Charles tells him so, reaches a hand out. Richard takes it.

"You lost your last appeal today." He says gravely.

Charles feels like that should be significant, but he thinks the other man got his way the day before and upped his meds just to be rude. He wants to say something soothing, instead he just stares up at the old man, hand idly curling the corner of his sheet.

Brexton sighs, obviously wondering if it's worth it.

"The verdict stays, but at least they aren't sending you to prison."

That pings slightly, but only just. He knows what to ask.

Charles looks over at the man as he asks, expression forgiving him for whatever the answer might be before he even gives it, "Will I be here forever?"

"Yes, Charles," Brexton sinks, "But I promise I'll make it as comfortable for you as possible. I hope that helps."

He doesn't reply, instead Charles just rolls over, tucking his knees up to his chest as far as they would go.

Sitting quietly next to the pillow, hidden by the curve of a sheet, is the black king. Charles discreetly closes his fingers around it and pulls it protectively under the safety of his pillow.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The next time Brexton walked in, Charles had his ear pressed to the wall over the headboard, sitting up on his knees as far as the constraint on his arm would let him. Richard stared up at him in amusement until the other man walked in.

"What in the hell are you doing?" He asked, obviously annoyed.

Charles pulled back enough to reveal the hole he'd gouged into the wall. The sheets and floor were dusted with bits of drywall. He'd hidden the king in the hollow of one of the metal bedposts.

"I can hear the ocean." He explained.

He got his other wrist tied up for that.

It was worth it.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He woke up in the dead of night to the peculiarly cozy feeling one gets from the presence of body warmth. The thin mattress is fairly unforgiving but if he squinted, he could see the outline of a person lying next to him. When the sun rises he finds a blood red hair on his pillow. The day after that, he finds a black bishop piece in his hand even though Brexton had long since taken away his chess set.

He didn't ask, he _was_ crazy after all.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Bishop pieces are quite easy to sharpen if one knows how.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The fog is back in force. Every movement is a new tragedy. Every thought hurts. It's quite difficult to twist his arm to get at the fastenings keeping him there. He almost drops the bishop twice, slipping through his fingers and cutting him on its new sharp edge, like it doesn't precisely want to be there. Yet something always keeps it from dropping.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The last few threads are the hardest to break. The Bishop's new sharpened edge has dulled.

"-is that so?" The words fade in and Charles immediately turns to listen, "This isn't for me. I cannot let you do this and you leave me no other option. You bring this on yourself."

Something in the words just break his heart. The last strings fall apart with barely even a touch.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Charles wakes up standing in front of CIA Director McCone, corralled by a ring of desks with dozens of petrified government officials at his whim. He can feel the absolute control he has over their minds, can _hear_ (to really hear!) their bottomless hate, can see the thread he was about to pull and make the officials dance. They deserved it, of course, they tried to kill them. All of them. It would be to least he could to do just rewrite their logic. He could end this mutant hating problem right there. Make the world safe for every generation forward.

The shard of metal hovering in front of his heart is a visceral deterrent. It's an inoffensive looking thing, just a slip of metal pulled off the edge of a desk, no larger than a pencil, spinning lazily, the end honed to a point. So sharp it probably wouldn't hurt at all, he acknowledges.

Charles Xavier looks up at Erik Lehnsherr and has no idea what to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> … I did not plan this. At all. Also, not gonna lie, for a good ten minutes I sat here wondering if you guys would try to kill me if I made that the real ending. Hah hah Charles has been crazypants this entire time *gets assassinated* This is probably also typo hell. I blame having to be in crazy brain mode to do this. I shall fix as I find them. :)
> 
> Also. *shoves Robbie* No. Get outta my FC story. You're adorable when you're direly ill and hallucinating but no.


	11. Define: "Insanity"

This was the single most important day in Erik's life and it was absolutely silent.

He felt like the rest of the world should be able to intuitively know. Like they should be able to see the path the world could take as easily as he now could. The earlier metaphorical snares and overgrowth suddenly cleared of the way, the rest of the steps simple, stretching out in front of him in perspective until it solidified into one solid, obvious goal on the horizon line.

He didn't expect fireworks. Fanfare. No, he could very easily supply those on his own. Looking down at the clumsy mess of limbs on the floor, arranged in such a way only people without any control of themselves could manage, Erik knew something was missing.

Something drastic.

In the rush of adrenaline and the frantic pace of his hummingbird heart, he couldn't for the life of him figure out what.

Then three solid thumps on the other side of the door jolted him, the impact shaking the frame just enough to make the panel shed a few more shards of mirror and send a twist of emotion up into Erik's gut. An emotion he was stubbornly not calling guilt. He'd completely forgotten Charles.

He never did find the button to open the hatch but the broken mirror showed the inner workings of the door nicely. It only took a small twitch of his fingers to pull the gear and the door slid away, a gust of violent wind forcing itself though the gap impatiently.

Standing just on the other side of the crooked threshold was the girl from earlier, Ororo... and only her. She peered up at him with wide, entirely white eyes, the unnatural wind shooting through the ship and shifting all the broken glass on the floor. Ororo looked up at Erik, muscles tensed in question, then she looked down at the thoroughly dead Shaw.

"You killed him?" She asked in a trembling voice that was trying so hard to be mature even as she was forced to swallow thickly at the end.

Erik paused, his brain taking an extra second to really accept his own answer, "Yes."

Ororo nodded once, then, apparently finding that admission reason enough to trust him, she darted forward. She twisted one dark skinned hand into a buckle on the side of his leg like he might disappear and peered back up at him with eyes that were losing their white, the wind dying down with them.

Even as Erik was trying hard not to alarm the obviously traumatized mutant girl, the adrenaline in his veins was blunting any gentle motion he attempted to make. His hand came down clumsy and sharp on her shoulder, making her jump. He pushed on, there was nothing he could do about it.

"The man you were out there with..." Was all he had to say and Ororo's shoulders hitched up in a soundless gasp. Then she was off, speaking in an accent Erik found vaguely familiar. The tones of someone of the middle east or Egypt perhaps, softened close to an American accent.

"No, but... Charles he... he's not. N-no well, not him. I shouldn't be... He's not... _him_. That is..."

Erik shifted his other hand to pull her small fingers from his leg gently and knelt down next to her, clasping her hand in both of his like a caught butterfly. He wanted the information she had, even though every instinct in his body told him to run off down the submarine and pull the place apart until he found Charles, but now was not the time to be uniformed. He couldn't force it out of her either. He knew this look in a child. He'd seen it in the mirror.

As much as she was trying to put up a strong front, the tremble in every movement was evident. This wasn't something he could scare from her, instead he tried the opposite approach, fixing her with that same look he remembered Charles teasing him for. The telepath had called it his pre-speech look, the one he was forced to use on their recruiting trip if Charles's puppy dog eyes failed, which they rarely did.

This was a stare of utter confidence. A stare that said, I am Erik Lehnsherr, I am infalliable. I am unbreakable. I am capable of anything... but so are you.

Charles actually said it was quite frightening to watch, he'd only been mostly joking.

"Calm." He said evenly, and Ororo nodded, "Now tell me. Where is Charles?"

She pinned her lips together for a moment, took in a breath that seemed loud as a jet engine and said the only thing Erik could not have expected.

"You can't trust him." She whispered.

Before the pure strangeness of the statement could really sink in, another voice broke into the natural echo chamber that was the submarine, drawing his attention up.

"Telling lies, Ororo?" Charles stood at the end of the room, looking more tired that Erik had ever seen him, dark hair curling and sticking to his forehead with sweat, strikingly pale in a way Erik couldn't blame on the now blinking lights. He also looked disturbingly pleased with himself. Charles had been known to have moments of pride in his own abilities to be sure, but this... this was arrogance.

Erik seemed inclined to agree with Ororo's advice.

"You're not Charles." Erik said, standing up and tucking the white haired girl behind his leg.

Charles paused in his advance across the room, halfway through pulling the glove of his hand. It was a deliberate stop, not one of surprise. His eyes shot up to Erik, looking displeased, before leaning to look over at Ororo.

"That was a mean trick you played, Ororo," He said evenly, freeing both of his hands from his gloves and tossing them to the off-kilter floor. "I thought we had an agreement. You help me out, I keep you not dead. Did you not find that fair?"

Erik didn't have to look back to see that Ororo had buried her face in her hands, as if that would be any sort of help. He pushed a hand out, intending on grabbing onto the various metal parts of Charles's uniform to at least be able to shake the confidence out of whoever this was.

Instead, he found nothing to grab onto.

Not-Charles looked at the hand motion with raised eyebrows, amused. "Troubles, Erik?" He tugged at the yellow face of his jacket, displaying the tears and holes where the metal used to be. "I freed myself of those when I woke up, of course there's still plenty of metal around for you to use, couldn't do anything about that. It's the _principle_ of the thing, you understand."

Erik let the jabs slide off him, raising his chin as he tried to sort the situation out. Shapeshifter... maybe. Telepath... Charles had been saying there was one around. Was this an illusion, but, no he still had the helmet.

"I will ask this once," Erik said calmly, "Who are you?"

A smile broke Charles's face at that and he shrugged, "That's still up for debate. Controlling a telepath is so much more exciting than possessing everyone else, even mutants. I'm not quite sure where I stop and Charles begins..." He contemplated it as if it were some fascinating riddle to play with before continuing, "but don't get your hopes up, Erik, I am still firmly in control. I stepped in with an advantage... which I should also thank you for."

The hull of the submarine groaned as Erik clenched his fists, stepping out into the room with an unmistakable intent it only made Not-Charles grin all the wider.

"If it weren't for you," He pressed fearlessly, "I would have never had the leverage I needed. Do you have any _idea_ what it's like being inside someone's head when they die?"

"Be quiet." Erik was closing the gap quickly, voice far more calm than he actually was, everything metal in the room melting as he walked past it.

"When the person you're controlling dies, in that second, every boundary, every wall, every guard a telepath has ever put up just... flinches." He said cheerfully even as Erik was only a few angry steps away, "It also hurts like nothing you could ever truly imagine. You're such a good friend, Erik."

Erik's hand was wrapped around Charles's throat even before he could remember getting there. The flinch of his blue eyes was almost enough to make him let go, to almost make the white hot anger which had consumed him fade. Then, like gasoline on a fire, that arrogance slipped back onto Charles's momentarily shocked face, eyes slanting over to look at Erik, daring him to go further.

"Come now," Not-Charles spoke in a voice muted by the pressure on his collar, strangled down to a harsh whisper. The grip wasn't as much bite as it was bark and Erik was torn between wanting to change that. "You wouldn't hurt us. Your only friend in the entire world? You're not that far gone yet."

Erik's breath came in with a livid hiss, teeth bared, but whatever he wanted to do, it was immediately stopped. Both Erik and Charles snapped over to look at the outside wall, identifying the circumstances in their own unique ways.

The ships were bright point of awareness now, his achievement at killing Shaw and his current anger widening his abilities to a degree Erik hadn't been aware he was capable of. He could feel the turn of the propellers, each individual piston in the massive engines, and he could feel the guns, aligning and preparing to fire.

"Arrogant bastards..." Charles whispered, as surprised as Erik was... in that he really wasn't surprised at the event, but in the timing.

Twisting in a move that would force Erik to either break Charles's neck or let go, he was suddenly free, quickly disappearing down the bent hallway with nothing but a challenging look tossed over his shoulder. Erik cursed loudly and followed, all the way through the corridor and back out onto the heated sands of the Cuban beach.

Free from the cocoon of metal that was the submarine, Erik's senses grew wider, flowing out over the children and what remained of the Hellfire Club. He could easily sense the children stumbling forward to try to greet them, instantly relieved to see them alive, letting their guard down. Erik couldn't let them do that. He lashed out with a hand, shoving them back a foot by the metal of their uniforms, giving them a dark warning glare before he stepped between them and Charles. As if he could do anything to stop the unknown telepath if he decided he wanted to hurt them, but it sent a clear message.

The telepath ignored them completely anyway, heading straight toward the edge of the water, eyes locked on the ships. He only looked away once, as he passed fearlessly past Angel, Azazel and a recovering Riptide.

Not-Charles gave them a feigned, twisted look of compassion, "Oh don't get your hopes up. Shaw is very, _very_ dead."

A light of understanding sparked in Azazel's eyes and he lurched forward a step, " _Telepath..."_ The red mutant looked very much like he wanted to advance further, but he found himself unable to do so.

"Really," Charles said with a laugh, "You've been most accommodating and I do thank you for that, but did you truly think I was going to let him blow up the world? What idiot thought that plan would work anyway?"

Erik clenched his fists at the exchange, the slight shift of sand and the feeling of uniform metal warning him of Raven's approach next to him. Her steps stuttered due to a limp she'd acquired somewhere, but she seemed to not want to entertain the weakness.

"Charles? What is..." She managed to get out before Erik's hand shot out to grasp her arm. She jumped at the sudden contact snapping her attention over, "What's going on?"

Obviously hearing the exchange, telepathically or otherwise, Charles looked over his shoulder again, amused at the outright panic creeping into Raven's stance.

"That's not Charles. It's another telepath." Erik trapped all of the rage and uselessness inside himself, pushing the words out in a dead monotone. He couldn't spare the time or effort on that. He was already halfway split between keeping track of the humans readying to fire and wringing out what little knowledge about telepathy he had for some kind of solution to this possession.

The children had crowded closer in a sign of injured solidarity, but they heard what Erik said just as well as Raven did. The reaction washed through all of them, fueling the smirk on Charles's face, easily seen across the expanse of sand between them.

Erik had been so concentrated on so many things, on the warning growl bubbling out of Hank's throat, that he mistook the trembling in Raven's shoulders for fear instead of the anger it was. She launched forward a few steps, only her limp and Erik's grip on her arm keeping her from doing something foolish.

"You give my brother back, right the fuck now!" She screamed the words, straining against Erik's grip.

Not-Charles laughed shortly, looking over at a still frozen Azazel and Riptide like they were old comrades in on the same joke.

"I'm sorry, that won't be happening." He said with a tilt of his head, arms held behind his back in that proper stance that was usually so very Charles, "Besides, I don't know if he'd want to come back now that he knows you have every intention of leaving him when this is over."

The tension against Erik's grip suddenly slackened, Raven gasping like the comment physically hurt.

"Stop!" Erik barked the order out, halting Hank from reacting to the statement, meeting the blue man's angry snarl with a dark glare of his own. He waited until Hank's temper coiled down before sweeping the same look over the others, "Charles is still in there, we must give him a chance to fight this."

"Unlikely." Not-Charles scoffed.

"Silence." Erik turned the ordering tone on the telepath, and for once, the telepath seemed to obey though it was more out of curiosity than fear. It didn't last long.

"Oh, Erik..." He spoke in his most disarming innocent voice, "I think you're mad at me. What are you going to do, shove a coin through our head again?"

"I said _silence!"_ Erik bellowed, all authority, "You don't deserve your mutation. You use it against those of your own kind and for what? Enjoyment?"

"No! For _revenge_!" Not-Charles didn't seem quite as amused anymore, all of them feeling a suppressing wave of dark thoughts not their own, the air seeming suddenly cold even though the sun still shone brightly. The telepath dropped his hold on the other mutants, ignoring them as they crashed to their knees, muscles not responding as they should. He shook his head at Erik, disappointed, angry, "I thought you, at least, could at least comprehend this if not appreciate it."

Erik continued staring at him with a damning look, shutting out all else. "We have nothing in common, you're just a two bit telepath who took advantage of someone far your superior in a moment of weakness."

The air dropped another few degrees, but it was an unnatural cold. It was the cold shiver you got when someone was staring at you across the room, the sinking feeling of dread when you realize you've misplaced your most prized possession.

"Erik, man, what are you doing." Alex whispered under his breath. He didn't get an answer. This was a dangerous game to play, Erik knew. It was also the only game he had. Clinging in the back of his mind was a conversation that seemed years ago. Charles talking about how emotions effected someone with his abilities, how he could be swayed or distracted by them.

Erik held no hope of actually effecting the telepath in any way, but if he could offer Charles any handhold, he would.

"You have your revenge, Erik," Not-Charles said darkly, "I deserve mine."

"Revenge for what?" Erik scoffed, knowing it was a sore subject and thus an advantage even though he had no idea of what it was precisely, "You're mad."

" _I am. not._ _ **mad**_ _."_ The words came out with a force that seemed to even surprise the telepath, the children dropping around him, gasping and falling to their knees, hands clamped around their heads. Erik tensed but, thankfully, whatever it was quickly subsided, leaving the children breathless but fine.

"Fourteen years ago," The telepath said, waiting until he had full attention from everyone there, "Charles Xavier _murdered_ me."

"Not a good way to prove you're not crazy," Sean grumbled, Alex and Hank making equally disbelieving faces until they noticed how the comment had turned Raven and Erik still.

" _ **You**_ _."_ Erik's expression was halfway hidden under the helmet he'd come out with, but you didn't really have to see it to know his current opinion. Raven too was no mystery, her scales actually standing out starker, more pointed along her skin.

"Oh, you've heard of me then," Not-Charles said, smirk returning, "How nice."

"How are you alive?" Raven growled, telegraphing her urge to set that mistake right as soon as possible.

"I very well would have been, mostly was," He answered pridefully, "if I hadn't had a hold on another mind at the time, I would have been. Instead, I transferred myself to that mind and waited there. I was weak, my own body was dead. I spent four years with nothing but a blurred self awareness. I deserve _retribution_."

The ships that had previously looked entirely harmless on the horizon line, nothing more than gray squares drifting across blue, started to shift into recognizable formations. Charles gave them a quick look, seeming to find it funny for some reason.

...Then the sky was full with missiles. Each of them scooping up into the sky with gray tails of smoke anchoring them to their originating ship, interrupting the sunlight overhead. All of them looked up, dread still waiting to kick in past the morbid urge to stare at the oncoming weaponry.

Erik shot forward into motion first, palms lashing out at the sky just as the missiles arced over the top of their parabola and started heading downwards. Then they halted.

Not-Charles laughed shortly, the only one who hadn't looked worried at any point, pacing up the sand like it was a vacation instead of a hostile war zone. He stopped next to Erik who was busy keeping the missiles from descending any farther.

"I will admit this," He said to Erik, not concerned about the spectacle anymore and seeming all the more smug for it, "Charlie did teach me one thing. You see, we telepaths are only linked to our bodies by habit. We can exist as consciousness, as a higher life form bound to nothing but our thoughts. We only die whenever we see fit and I have no intentions of doing that any time soon. I am essentially _immortal."_

Erik's arms shook as his concentration was pulled apart by a loose thread, teeth gritting at the effort. Charles stepped closer, looking from the missiles to the man.

"I'll tell you what, if it makes you feel better, I'll do something for you." He said enigmatically, "You take care of the humans here, and I will go solve the root of the problem."

The missiles slipped, Erik snapping a look over to the telepath, words grinding out between his teeth, "What are you going to do?"

The Shadow King tipped his head smiling almost benevolently, reminding Erik abruptly of Shaw. The missiles slipped another few feet.

"Charles has so much power in this head of his. He kept it dormant, he was too scared to use it, too naïve," He said wistfully, "It's power I now have access to. At the beginning of every war is a government full of the ignorant. I'll teach them what it means to start a war with _us."_

Erik realized this was the second time that day that he'd been agreement with a madman. The realization sat bitterly on the back of his tongue.

Charles backed away, taking Erik's silence as an agreement, and gestured at the teleporter with a crooked finger. It was obvious Azazel was once again not moving of his own will, the telepath wasn't in control of his expressions or his mouth and you didn't have to speak "Russian to know that he was cursing.

"You can't do this!" Alex put on his best adult voice and stepped forward, spurring the rest of the children on to do the same, but all it took was a look at them and they found themselves robbed of the ability.

"Don't be difficult." Not-Charles chastised, digging his fingers into Azazel's arm. Before he nodded at the teleporter he turned a smirk at Erik,"It was nice to meet you Erik. Do yourself a favor and stay out of my way."

Just before the splash of sulfur and smoke took over the space, Erik drug his hands together, clashing the missiles against each other in midair. Then, with a speed born from practice, he lunged for Azazel and barely hooked his fingers against the mutant's sleeve... but it was enough.

With the sound of air rushing in to fill in a suddenly empty space and the stark change from beach bright sun to a dim fluorescence of a government complex, Erik was somewhere else. Before he could even properly adjust to the new location, The Shadow King was stepping forward and addressing the ring of startled military officials with a slanted smile.

"Now then, which one of you just gave an order to kill us, hm?"

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posting from FF.net. I will be posting each completed chapter up daily.


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